DUBAI (AFP) - Snow has fallen over the United Arab Emirates for the first time ever, leaving a white blanket over the mountains of Ras al-Khaimah as the desert country experienced a cold spell and above-average rainfall.

Dubai airport's meteorology department told AFP that snow fell over the Al-Jees mountain range in Ras al-Khaimah, which is the most northerly member of the UAE federation.

The English-language Gulf News reported that the mountain cluster, 5,700 feet (1,737 metres) above sea level, "had heavy night-time snowfall for the past two days as a result of temperatures dropping to as low as minus five Celsius (23 Fahrenheit)" and stunning the emirate's residents.

On Monday, 12.6 millimetres (half an inch) of rain fell on the desert emirate of Dubai, where it hardly ever rains, as police reported 500 accidents on its roads in 24 hours, including one fatality, as a result of a three-day downpour.

A cold spell has hit the country this week, with the mercury plunging to 12 degrees Celsius (53.6 Fahrenheit) in Dubai on Wednesday night.

The meteorology department, however, said the chilly weather in Dubai, where summer temperatures reach 50 Celcius (122 Fahrenheit), will probably end by next week.

ANCHORAGE, ALASKA - Environmental officials say an oil spill in an Alaskan wildlife sanctuary that followed a shipwreck three weeks ago is far worse than originally feared.

Up to 1.28 million litres of thick fuel oil ñ more than eight times the original estimate ñ are believed to have leaked into the Bering Sea after a Malaysian-flagged freighter ran aground off the Aleutian islands on Dec. 8.

A spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, Lynda Giguere, said Thursday that more than 600 birds have been coated with oil while 109 others have died since the spill was first reported.

Beaches in the area are coated by a thick layer of oil and tar balls have been seen floating in the region's waters, she said.

The Wildlife Refuge is the nesting haven for 40 million seabirds and numerous marine mammals, including the endangered Steller sea lion and western Alaska sea otter.

The Singaporean-owned freighter, Selendang Ayu, was carrying soy beans from the United States to China when it ran aground off Unalaska Island on Dec. 8 after losing power to its engines.

Six crew members died while an American Coast Guard helicopter was trying to airlift them to safety.

There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production– with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.

To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world's weather. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”

A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.

To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth’s average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras – and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the “little ice age” conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 – years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.

Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. “Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,” concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. “Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions.” [...]

Ironically, several of the countries hit by the waves had escaped the more extreme natural phenomena that pummeled their neighbours earlier in the year.

Incessant monsoon rains, the heaviest in years, had lashed Bangladesh, northeast India and parts of Nepal in July and August, killing at least 1,240 people.

Large swathes of Bangladesh, one of the world's poorest and most densely populated nations, were submerged for weeks. At least 700 people died and many were left homeless.

Powerful storms in the Philippines in early December spawned flash floods and landslides that swept away whole villages, leaving 1,600 dead or missing.

In both cases human activity -- building development in Bangladesh and illegal logging in the Phipippines -- were blamed for worsening the effects of the downpours.

The World Bank estimated the cost to Bangladesh at 2.2 billion dollars this year.

"Farmers have had huge losses and siltation of much land means that many areas will be barren for around 10 years," said Dilruba Haider, assistant representative at the United Nations Development Fund.

Months after the floodwater subsided, aid agencies have described the increased hardship endured by millions already living on less than a dollar a day as a "quiet disaster".

An unusual high pressure system in the Pacific was the main reason for a record 10 typhoons that hit Japan and the heaviest rain in 29 years, the country's Meteorological Agency said.

About 216 people died and damage reached one trillion yen (9.7 billion dollars), government agencies said.

Tokyo is now racing to develop new measures to better warn senior citizens, who accounted for most of the victims, and to improve evacuation orders.

Many elderly were swept away in floods or buried alive in landslides. Of the 93 killed by Typhoon Tokage, the deadliest in 25 years, which struck in October, two-thirds were aged over 60.

Also in October Japan suffered its worst earthquake in a decade, measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale, which killed 40 people.

China suffered too, from floods, typhoons, and the worst drought in more than 50 years which still gripped large parts of the south and east at the end of the year.

More than 1,000 people died in weather-related incidents but the toll was lower than the previous year's figure of 1,900 because of better emergency planning, officials said.

Total economic losses for the year were put at 10 billion dollars.

In Taiwan, massive floods brought by storm Mindulle killed 29 and caused 4.07 billion Taiwan dollars (126 million US) in losses to agriculture and fisheries.

Mudslides triggered by Typhoon Aere in August claimed 15 lives and 767 million dollars in losses, prompting government officals and experts to restrict farming and land use in some conservation and landslide prone areas.

Dozens of families were clearing up storm debris tonight after a “mini-tornado” damaged around 100 houses in the Irish Republic.
The sudden squall ripped slates from roofs, smashed windows and overturned sheds and cars at around 1pm.

The worst affected area covered three housing estates in Clonee in Co Meath on the Dublin border.

Gardai and fire officers said it was amazing nobody was injured.
A main road between the Hansfield, Castaheaney and Hunters Run estates was closed off and residents were urged to stay indoors.

“There is still a danger of falling branches and slates,” said one fire officer.

Earlier, residents fled into their homes as the freak storm swept through their estates.

One resident said: “It got very dark and blustery. I saw a flash of lightning and then the house started to shake. It was the most frightening thing I have ever gone through.

“It felt like an earthquake or a mini tornado.”

AKKARAIPATTU—Flying emergency aid 14,000 kilometres from Canada to Colombo's international airport is the easy part. Hauling it the next 200 kilometres overland into the hands of desperate refugees from Sri Lanka's battered eastern coastal communities is proving far more difficult — and dangerous.

Foreign aid workers struggled with a day-long torrential downpour yesterday that paralyzed relief efforts across Sri Lanka's isolated northeast, just days after tsunami waves wiped out entire coastal settlements.

The relentless monsoon rains washed away roads and flooded highways, forcing hundreds of relief trucks and other supply vehicles to turn back to the capital and preventing aid flights from landing.

Refugees waiting for help here in the Ampara district — the worst-affected areas that account for roughly half of Sri Lanka's nearly 30,000 dead — were forced to huddle on the floors of crowded schools and temples braced for possible flooding and leaks.

Aid workers had to set aside some of their most urgent efforts to burn bodies and chlorinate drinking water wells that were contaminated by salt water when the tidal waves engulfed local fishing villages.

"The water level is rising because of the flooding, but also because the drainage system has now completely collapsed," said Canadian aid worker Raga Alphonsus, who arrived here this week to help ZOA, a Dutch aid agency for displaced people.

He predicted major difficulties after the first wave of food distributions has been completed, because water and sanitation problems will become more pressing with the swelling tide of refugees.

"If it's not solved we're heading to a different type of calamity," Alphonsus warned, adding, "The real issue now is co-ordination of aid."

Relief groups said the continuing rains have not only slowed aid shipments, but seriously hampered the recovery of bodies in the Ampara and Batticaloa districts that bore the brunt of the tsunami. [...]

Hong Kong - Hong Kong on Saturday had its coldest New Year's Day for more than 40 years as temperatures in the normally balmy territory plunged to as low as three degrees Celsius.

Urban temperatures fell to 6.4 degrees Celsius while in the rural New Territories, temperatures of three degrees Celsius - the lowest on record for this time of year - were recorded on Saturday morning.

Cold shelters have opened across the territory of 6.8 million people, which is ill-equipped to deal with low temperatures, and welfare workers were distributing blankets to elderly people.

The cold snap is being caused by a winter monsoon that has been blown down from northern China, where seasonal temperatures usually plunge below zero at the end of December and beginning of January.

The coldest temperature recorded in Hong Kong on a New Year's Day before this year was six degrees Celsius in 1988. Overall, meteorologists said it is the coldest New Year's Day for more than 40 years.

LOS ANGELES - Heavy snow shut down a major highway north of Los Angeles on Monday and slowed post-holiday travel in the Sierra Nevada as California faced a second week of stormy weather.

Pounding rain flooded roads and dumped snow on Southern California mountains, turning the morning commute into a white-knuckle obstacle course.

Deep snow in the Tejon Pass north of Los Angeles shut down Interstate 5, the state's main north-south highway, and the California Highway Patrol said it was expected to stay closed at the pass all day.

At lower elevations in the Los Angeles region, flooding closed the Long Beach Freeway at the Pacific Coast Highway.

In Northern California, people driving home from ski resorts in the Sierra Nevada faced long traffic delays and slippery roads, and winter storm and snow advisories were in effect for the region. Some ski resorts in the Lake Tahoe area reported as much as 9 feet of snow since late last week.

The National Weather Service said an additional foot of snow was possible in the northern Sierra. [...]

At least four people, including a seven-year-old girl, drowned when they were dragged out to sea off Victoria's south-west coast.

A seven-year-old boy was still missing last night, while three children were in hospital, one in a critical condition.

The group of seven or eight, including three adults - all believed to be related - had been swimming earlier at Stingray Bay, about a kilometre from Warrnambool's main beach, Lady Bay.

They were believed to have been walking between two islands at low tide when conditions changed and they were swept out to sea at 3.20pm.

Victoria Police and Southern Peninsula Rescue Service helicopters, surf lifesavers and State Emergency Service volunteers joined local fishermen to recover six of the group from the water, but three adults could not be resuscitated.

Four children were rushed to Warrnambool Base Hospital, where one later died.

Justin Houlihan, a member of Warrnambool Surf Life Saving Club, said Stingray Bay was perilous because of swirling currents that changed conditions rapidly. [...]

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) - At least 35 people have been killed in a bout of severe winter weather that has brought flooding, mudslides and snow to parts of Pakistan, authorities said Sunday.

A woman and eight children drowned Saturday night in a rain-swollen river near Isakhel town about 200 kilometres southwest of the capital, Islamabad, said Rana Naseer Ahmed, the top government administrator in Mianwali, a vast district where Isakhel is located.

The 50-year-old woman and the children, ages four to 10, were in a tent pitched in a dried up part of riverbed that was flooded by rain, Ahmed said.

Rescuers have recovered the bodies. It was not clear whether they were from the same family, but Ahmed said they were members of a shepherding tribe.

Also on Saturday, a couple and their four children were killed when their home was struck by a mudslide triggered by heavy rain and snow in Abbottabad, a hill resort town about 70 kilometres northwest of Islamabad, said local police officer Azghar Khan.

Rain and heavy snow have been lashing Abbottabad and several other neighbouring mountainous areas in northern Pakistan.

In Quetta, capital of the southwestern Baluchistan province - which is in the grip of a cold wave and has received the heaviest snow in two decades - three people were killed in their homes by gas from leaking from heaters, said a Quetta police official, Salim Khan.

A day earlier, a woman and her three children died of asphyxiation in their home in Quetta, Khan said.

Rains and snow have hit been many parts of Baluchistan since Friday and about 13 people have been reported killed by cold and rain-related incidents in the province, said Farooq Jogezai, the province's top emergency relief official.

The casualties in Baluchistan include two women and a child who were killed Friday when the thatched roof of their mud home collapsed in Chaman town near the Afghan border, about 125 kilometres northwest of Quetta.

It is widely thought tsunamis are rare, many countries believe they are immune to them, and popular wisdom holds earthquakes responsible for the killer waves. None of these beliefs is entirely true.

A tsunami is a surge of water, or a series of surges generated by an impulsive, shock-displacement of ocean water that can occur anywhere.

Like earthquakes, volcanoes can cause these surges, and often do. One of the most destructive tsunamis in recent history occurred when the island volcano of Krakatoa erupted in 1883.

Submarine landslides, which can involve thousands of cubic kilometres of material, can also generate a tsunami.

Tsunamis can have their origins in space. Australian geographer Professor Ted Bryant points out that a meteorite striking the ocean can have a devastating effect. He maintains that on February 22, 1491, a meteorite strike caused tsunamis more than 130m high along the Australian coast.

Many countries believe they are immune from tsunamis but almost all coasts are at risk, says Bryant.

There was a tsunami in India in 1941. The 1755 Portuguese earthquake is reported to have caused a 15m tsunami that destroyed part of Lisbon and the nearby coasts of Spain and Morocco.

Tsunamis have been common around the Japanese islands for the past 200 years. Other large tsunamis occurred in Alaska in 1946, 1957, 1958 and 1964.

Bryant has found signs of tsunami waves more than 100m high on such unlikely places as coastal southeast Australia and the Scottish coastline north of Edinburgh.

Geographers Drs Roy Walters and James Goff have classified tsunamis by the distance from their source to the area of impact; that is, local and remote tsunami.

Locally generated tsunamis have short warning times - 15 to 30 minutes - while remote tsunamis have warning times ranging up to several hours.

The destructive potential of a tsunami is not simply a function of the size of the underwater disturbance, the so-called "source characteristic".

The gradient and shape of the seashore, coastal topography and shoreline configuration are, in many instances, as important as strength of the initial water displacement.

These "coastal response characteristics" and the source characteristics, determine the impact potential.

In 1958, a landslide into Lituya Bay, Alaska, created tsunami waves reportedly more than 400m high along a wilderness coastal area, stripping the forest to bare rock to an incredible height of more than 500m above sea level. Presumably this mammoth wave resulted from the distinct configuration of the coast, in particular the shoreline topography, which channelled the water along a narrow bay.

Some earthquakes generate tsunamis disproportionately large for the surface movement, or so called "surface wave", created.

For example, on September 1, 1992, an earthquake with the magnitude of 6.9 generated a tsunami with waves up to 15m high that struck 26 towns along 250km of Nicaragua's Pacific coast. The waves swept as far as 1km inland at one point. The tsunami left more than 110 people dead and 490 injured.

Experiences of highly destructive tsunamis in our general region are not as uncommon as many people might think.

According to physical geographers Dr Willem de Lange and Professor Terry Healy, of the University of Waikato, there have been 11 tsunamis in ocean waters next to the Auckland metropolitan region since 1840. Most are thought to have been less than 2m high.

However, 150 years is not a long time and more extreme events are likely to have happened in the past. Local sources (earthquakes and volcanic eruptions) are thought to produce the most damaging tsunamis, but none have occurred during recorded history.

The Auckland Regional Council believes there is about a 50 per cent chance that within the next 50 years Auckland will be hit by a tsunami originating from a large earthquake off the west coast of South America. Estimates are that wave heights of around 4m could occur in the outer Hauraki Gulf.

Major tsunamis occur in the Pacific Ocean region only about once a decade. The Moro Gulf, Philippines, tsunami in 1976 was followed by another highly destructive tsunami in New Guinea in July, 1998. An earthquake off northwest New Guinea has been blamed for this tsunami, which killed around 2000 people near Aitape.

But Bryant and others argue the 7.1 magnitude earthquake was too small to be responsible for the 15m wave that swept 500m inland at Aitape. They believe that a submarine landslide was the likely source.

The consequences of the Aitape event were, fortunately, quite localised. This is not always the case.

The earthquake that caused the catastrophic Boxing Day tsunamis was hardly felt in Indonesia, and not at all in Sri Lanka, yet the water displacement caused by the driving of the Indian plate beneath the Burma plate created waves that killed people on the east African coast almost 5000km away.

Following the great Chilean earthquake of 1960, tsunamis travelled almost 10,000km to Hawaii, where waves of more than 10m killed 60 people and destroyed many buildings along the coast of Hilo.

There is no doubt that tsunamis are an underrated hazard.

The biggest question in natural hazards research is not will events like these happen again, but when?

* Chris de Freitas is an associate professor in physical geography at the University of Auckland.

Fears more bushfires could be caused by lightning strikes across Western Australia have proved warranted. During storms on Sunday night, three blazes were sparked.

On Monday morning, WA's Department of Conservation and Land Management responded to two fires at the Lake Muir Nature Reserve east of Manjimup, and in Wattle forest block between Manjimup and Walpole.

Another blaze had also been detected in the Fitzgerald River National Park between Bremer Bay and Hopetoun.

The fire at Lake Muir was relatively inaccessible because of the nearby wetlands, and there were fears the blaze may expand to over 1000ha before it could be contained.

Meanwhile, a fire started by lightning in the Albany area last week continued to burn yesterday, with water bombing helicopters being used to damp down hotspots.

LOS ANGELES - Ice and snow kept California's heavily traveled main north-south highway closed for a second day Tuesday as residents awaited the next storm in the parade of wild weather that has hammered the state.

The storms that started just over a week ago have piled snow 9 feet deep on higher spots in the Sierra Nevada, soaked Los Angeles with record rainfall, caused mudslides and knocked out power to thousands of customers.

A 40-mile stretch of Interstate 5 remained shut Tuesday north of Los Angeles because as much as 2 feet of snow had fallen on top of a layer of ice at Tejon Pass, elevation about 4,200 feet, the California Highway Patrol said. The CHP closed the freeway early Monday and there was no immediate indication Tuesday when it might be reopened.

The closing idled hundreds of truckers and other travelers who didn't want to turn around to take a detour looping around the mountains and through the desert.

The storms were sparked by an extensive low pressure system that edged down from the Gulf of Alaska and remained parked off the Pacific Northwest coast. The latest front was expected to linger through Tuesday and another system was to move across the state later this week. [...]

Yes, it was a shocker.

Snow, frost, hail and a tornado marked the first month of summer, with the coldest temperatures recorded in December since 1945.

National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research figures for last month show it was the fifth coldest since records were established in 1853. The national average temperature was just 13.4C - 2.2C below normal and more like spring than summer.

The record-breaking low temperatures not only kept the summer clothes in the cupboard but slowed the growth and ripening of berries, stone fruit and crops.

Southerlies produced dramatic amounts of rain, with more than double normal rainfall in eastern regions from Hawkes Bay to Southland. Rainfall was also well above average in Auckland, Coromandel, Waikato, Ruapehu and Wanganui.

Despite that, less than three-quarters of average rainfall was recorded in sheltered parts of Fiordland and south Westland.

And if you thought there was a dire shortage of sun, there was.
Auckland recorded only 174 hours of sunshine - 83 per cent of the normal figure and the third lowest since records began in 1963. [...]

WICHITA, Kan. - The bad news: more tornadoes were reported in Kansas and the nation last year than at any time since records have been kept.

The good news: no one died in the Kansas tornadoes, and the national death toll was far below the annual average.

Kansas recorded 124 tornadoes last year, breaking the mark of 116 set in 1991. The state also set a record for most tornadoes in a single month: 66 in May.

There were 1,555 tornadoes recorded in the country through September, according to statistics compiled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla. Even without figures for the final three months, that breaks the record set in 1998 by more than 130.

The higher numbers do not necessarily mean more tornadoes are occurring than in the past. Better reporting systems contribute to the record, said Mike Smith, founder and chief executive of WeatherData, a private forecasting service based in Wichita. [...]

WASHINGTON - Moisture-laden storms from the north, west and south are likely to converge on much of America over the next several days in what could be a once-in-a-generation onslaught, meteorologists forecast Tuesday.

If the gloomy computer models at the U.S. Climate Prediction Center are right, we'll see this terrible trio:

- The "Pineapple Express," a series of warm wet storms heading east from Hawaii, drenching Southern California and the far Southwest, which already are beset with heavy rain and snow. It could cause flooding, avalanches and mudslides.

- An "Arctic Express," a mass of cold air chugging south from Alaska and Canada, bringing frigid air and potentially heavy snow and ice to the usually mild-wintered Pacific Northwest.

- An unnamed warm, moist storm system from the Gulf of Mexico drenching the already saturated Ohio, Tennessee and Mississippi valleys. Expect heavy river flooding and springlike tornadoes.

All three are likely to meet somewhere in the nation's midsection and cause even more problems, sparing only areas east of the Appalachian Mountains.

"You're talking a two- or three-times-a-century type of thing," said prediction center senior meteorologist James Wagner, who's been forecasting storms since 1965. "It's a pattern that has a little bit of everything."

While the predicted onslaught is nothing compared with the tsunami that ravaged South Asia last week, the combo storms could damage property and cause a few deaths.

The exact time and place of the predicted one-two-three punch changes slightly with every new forecast. But in its weekly "hazards assessment," the National Weather Service alerted meteorologists and disaster specialists Tuesday that flooding and frigid weather could start as early as Friday and stretch into early next week, if not longer.

"It's a situation that looks pretty potent," Ed O'Lenic, the Climate Prediction Center's operations chief, told Knight Ridder. "A large part of North America looks like it's going to be affected."

Kelly Redmond, the deputy director of the Western Regional Climate Center at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nev., where an unusual 18 inches of snow is on the ground already, said the expected heavy Western rains could cause avalanches. Since Oct. 1, Southern California and western Arizona have had three to four times the normal precipitation for the area.

"Somebody is in for something pretty darn interesting," Redmond said.

The last time a similar situation seemed to be brewing - especially in the West - was in January 1950, O'Lenic said. That month, 21 inches of snow hit Seattle, killing 13 people in an extended freeze, and Sunnyvale, Calif., got an unusual tornado.

The same scenario played out in 1937, when there was record flooding in the Ohio River Valley, said Wagner, of the prediction center.

Meteorologists caution that their predictions are only as good as their computer models. And forecasts get less accurate the farther into the future they attempt to predict.

"The models tend to overdo the formation of these really exciting weather formations for us," said Mike Wallace, a University of Washington atmospheric scientist.

Yet the more Wallace studied the models the more he became convinced that something wicked was coming this way.

"It all fits together nicely," Wallace said. "There's going to be weather in the headlines this weekend, that's for sure."

Wagner was worried about the Ohio and Tennessee River valleys as the places where the three nasty storm systems could meet, probably with snow, thunderstorms, severe ice storms and flooding. Some of those areas already are flooded.

The converging storms are being steered by high-pressure ridges off Alaska and Florida and are part of a temporary change in world climate conditions, O'Lenic said.

Over equatorial Indonesia, east of where the tsunami hit, meteorologists have identified a weather-making phenomenon called the Madden-Julian Oscillation. It's producing extra-stormy weather to its east. Similar oscillations in the north Atlantic and north Pacific are changing global weather patterns. Add to the strange mix this year's mild El Nino - a warming of the equatorial Pacific - which is unusually far west, Redmond said.

There's also another, more playful explanation: The nation's weathermen are about to converge on Southern California, and they bring bad weather with them.

The American Meteorological Society will meet next week in usually tranquil San Diego, which should be hit with the predicted storms and accompanying flooding in time for the group's gathering.

In 1987,when the meteorologists met in San Antonio for their convention, the city had ice storms. In 1993, when they gathered in Anaheim, Calif., it rained for 4.5 out of five days and triggered mudslides. Atlanta got rare snow during the meteorologists' 1996 convention. And in 2003 in Long Beach, Calif., heavy rain greeted them.

Ron McPherson, the group's recently retired executive director, said: "It always rains on the weatherman's parade."

A wintry blast closed schools and glazed roads with ice and snow Tuesday in the Rockies and on the central Plains, part of a parade of wild weather that had closed a major highway in California and caused new flooding in Arizona.

Various levels of winter weather advisories and storm warnings were in effect from Tuesday into Wednesday morning from Arizona to Connecticut, the National Weather Service said.

"It's nothing that is going to make history, but it's a pretty good-sized storm," said Pat Slattery, a spokesman for the National Weather Service office in Kansas City.

Snow and freezing rain swept through Colorado, causing scores of accidents during the morning rush hour and closing schools. One crash near Ordway in southeastern Colorado was blamed for a fatality, but authorities did not have details.

The storm was expected to bring up to a foot of snow to the Denver area and up to 2 feet to parts of the southern mountains, where avalanche warnings were posted.

An avalanche blocked U.S. 550 about 40 miles north of Durango in the state's southwest corner. [...]

Many regions of Portugal, including the southernmost province of Algarve, the country's main tourism centre, are facing their worst drought in over a decade, the national meteorology office said Tuesday.

Water levels at dams and lakes are at their lowest levels in the Algarve, the southern province of Alentejo and the northwestern province of Minho, since the early 1990s, said a meteorologist with the office, Fatima Espirito Santo.

"We need Janaury to be extremely rainy, something that only happens in 20 percent of all years, in order to bring water levels to normal," she told state radio RDP.

The national weather office forecast sees no chance of rain until at least January 15.

In October Environment Minister Luis Guedes threatened the government would ration water in the Algarve, which is home to scores of golf courses, if the province did not receive enough rain by the end of 2004.

(Criciuma): Two tornadoes that struck southern Brazil have forced hundreds of people from their homes, civil defence officials said on Tuesday.

The tornadoes destroyed three houses in Santa Catarina state on Monday, severely damaged 27 and ripped the roof shingles off some 100 houses. At least one death was linked to the twisters.

The first tornado touched down on Monday afternoon about six kilometres (four miles) outside the centre of Criciuma, civil defence officials said.

A second twister, with winds topping 115 kilometres-per-hour (71 mph), struck an hour later even closer to the centre of Criciuma - a city 900 kilometres (560 miles) southwest of Rio de Janeiro.

Amateur video showed the moment the second tornado touched down.

One elderly man died of a heart attack, which may have been related to stress caused by the high winds. About five people suffered minor injuries.

Each tornado lasted about seven minutes. Clovis Correia, a meteorologist with the state's weather service, said that on a scale of one to five, the two tornadoes registered at level one, the weakest.

Tornadoes are rare in the region and throughout Brazil, although a weak tornado struck the same region last month.

Santa Catarina was also struck by rare subtropical cycle in March that many meteorologists said was a hurricane - a controversial classification because it has long been believed that hurricanes didn't occur in the southern Atlantic.

THREE children dodged death or serious injury by minutes when a tornado slammed into a row of terraced cottages at Lymm.

The climbing frame they had been playing on was hurled into the air, over the house, the road and the nearby Bridgewater Canal before landing, a twisted wreck, in a field about 50 yards away.

Four cottages were badly damaged - three of them made uninhabitable.

The roofs were ripped off two, with slates, bricks and masonry scattered over a wide area. A third had six holes punched in the roof and its dormer destroyed.

Three families had to be evacuated from the homes in Warrington Lane, Agden, after the tornado struck on New Year's Day. [...]

It had all the makings of a genuine Midwest tornado, but the ominous funnel cloud that captivated wide-eyed residents across the Valley on Tuesday didn't spawn much more than a downpour of hail and a dousing of wind and rain.

"We're lucky it didn't touch down because it had the signature of a tornado on the radar," said meteorologist Hector Vasquez with the National Weather Service in Phoenix. "It would have done some roof damage and blown out some windows."

The funnel cloud, which took over a portion of the afternoon sky for more than an hour, blanketed portions of the West Valley with pea-sized hail after it passed over Luke Air Force Base and headed east. Vasquez said the cell, which forms through an updraft in a thunderstorm and starts to rotate, gained strength over the White Tanks Mountains before barreling into Phoenix. [...]

REGINA - While still digging out from last week's massive storm, Canada's Prairie provinces have been walloped again by more snow and bitter cold.

Dramatically low temperatures swept in again and meteorologists have again issued numerous severe wind chill warnings. Health officials are urging people to stay indoors.

In Regina, with the wind chill, it felt like -51 C on Wednesday.

"I can't remember it being this cold," said one man, "and I've been here a long time. It's pretty nippy."

While the temperature is frigid, it still isn't a record for Regina, which has had it much colder: -50 in 1885, without the wind chill.

But the impact of this type of severe cold is felt.

At the Regina airport flights have been delayed as cargo doors freeze up and equipment breaks down.

The cold has also claimed hundreds of car and trucks. Those that do start, often don't get very far.

Even schools have been shut down, and that's rare on the Prairies. School boards were worried students might be stranded on broken down buses.

In Edmonton, fire forced dozens of homeless people from a shelter, leaving the city scrambling to find alternative housing.

Doctors are warning of hypothermia-induced cardiac arrests, of exhaustion from shovelling in the extreme cold, as well as exposure. [...]

There are only two places in the United States where colliding tectonic plates could cause a major tsunami, and new studies show a new earthquake in at least one of these locations could be imminent.

The Cascadia subduction zone, a 680-mile (1,088-kilometer) fault that runs up to 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the coast of the Pacific Northwest — from Cape Mendocino in California to Vancouver Island in southern British Columbia — has experienced a cluster of four massive earthquakes during the past 1,600 years. Scientists are trying to figure out if it is about to undergo a massive shift one more time before entering a quiescent period.

"People need to know it could happen," said U.S. Geological Survey geologist Brian Atwater.

The historical record for this zone, which has the longest recorded data about its earthquakes of any major fault in the world, shows that earthquakes occur in clusters of up to five events, with an average time interval of 300 years between quakes, said Chris Goldfinger, a marine geologist at Oregon State University. Goldfinger and other scientists have been studying this subduction zone for many years.

The two most recent quakes on this fault occurred in the year 1700 (a magnitude 9 event) and approximately the year 1500. It has now been 305 years since the last event. So is the Cascadia subduction zone finished for now or on the brink of event No. 5?

"We know quite a bit about the periodicity of this fault zone and what to expect," he said. "But the key point we don’t know is whether the current cluster of earthquake activity is over yet, or does it have another event left in it."

The Cascadia subduction zone occurs where the relatively thin Juan de Fuca plate moves eastward and under the westward-moving North American Plate. When that collision results in a rupture, massive earthquakes occur. The other active subduction zone capable of producing a major earthquake-tsunami sequence is in Alaska, the site of a giant earthquake and subsequent tsunami in 1964.

Scientists say a rupture along the Cascadia fault would cause the sea floor to bounce 20 feet (6 meters) or more, setting off powerful ocean waves relatively close to shore. The first waves could hit coastal communities in 30 minutes or less -- too rapidly for the current warning systems to save lives.

A tsunami along the Atlantic Coast is considered extremely unlikely. [...]

TORONTO - Winter storms and below-normal temperatures are causing headaches from coast to coast, forcing the country's busiest airport to cancel dozens of flights and plunging the Prairies into a deep freeze.

Snow and icy rain pelted northeastern United States and southern Ontario on Thursday morning, as Toronto's Pearson International Airport cancelled more than 80 flights.

Environment Canada warned of storms from Windsor to Kingston and Ottawa, predicting up to 20 centimetres of snow in some parts, while Air Canada said travellers could brace for more delays and cancellations at Pearson until Friday.

At least 10 centimetres of snow, freezing rain and ice pellets were also expected to hit areas from Montreal to Atlantic Canada later in the day.

Bitter cold descends on Prairies

The Prairies suffered most on Thursday, as meteorologists warned of severe wind chills while health officials urged people to stay indoors.

The wind chill made it feel like –41 C in Winnipeg, which like many Prairie communities is still digging out from last week's massive storm.
A day earlier, the wind chill dipped to –51 C in Regina.

"I can't remember it being this cold," said one man, "and I've been here a long time. It's pretty nippy."

It wasn't a record for the city, where temperatures plunged to –50 C in 1885, without the wind chill. But the severe cold took its toll.

Flights were delayed at Regina's airport as cargo doors froze and equipment broke down, while hundreds of cars and trucks failed to start or bogged down in snow.

In a move that's rare on the Prairies, many schools closed as their boards feared students might get stranded on broken-down buses.

In Edmonton, fire forced dozens of homeless people from a shelter, leaving the city scrambling to find alternative housing.

Doctors are warning of hypothermia-induced cardiac arrests, exhaustion from shovelling in the extreme cold and exposure.

The freeze was expected to let up a bit later Thursday, but then return with a vengeance on the weekend, when the Prairies will be in for another bout of temperatures in the –20s.

Vancouver temperatures dip to unusual low

Meanwhile, British Columbia is experiencing its own type of deep freeze as the first snowfall of the winter began falling across the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island on Thursday morning.

Flurries were expected to dump up to five centimeters, with more snow expected through Saturday.

Temperatures in the Vancouver area dipped a few degrees below zero overnight Wednesday, which is unusually cold for the city.

Advocates for the homeless worried that some of Vancouver's most vulnerable residents won't be able to cope.

Penny Kerrigan said one young street person she encountered was typical of those her social welfare group has been helping.

"He said it was so cold he felt like his feet were going to fall off, so he had to walk."

CARSTAIRS, Alberta - RCMP say several people were taken to various hospitals following a 60-vehicle pileup in central Alberta this afternoon.

The pileup happened on an icy stretch of Highway Two near Carstairs, about 50 kilometres north of Calgary.

Mounties say none of the injuries is life threatening.

They say the accident happened in a low-lying area and oncoming drivers didn't have time to stop.

The road around the accident scene is closed while emergency officials clearing the area. [...]

The icebergs were see in the Southern Ocean, about 700 kilometres (420 miles) southeast of the South Island, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) said Thursday.

They were a hazard to all shipping, including yachts participating in the Vendeeglobe solo round-the-world race, officials said.

The Vendeeglobe website has issued a warning to competitors after one sailor sustained minor damage to his boat when he hit an iceberg just before Christmas.

NIWA scientist Lionel Carter said 15 icebergs, some up to three kilometres wide, have been recorded.

"In 30 years of working for NIWA, this is the first time I have recorded sightings of icebergs in New Zealand waters," Carter said.

Previous reportings were in the 1890s, early 1920s, 1930s and in 1948.

In 1931 icebergs were seen as far north as near Dunedin in the South Island.

He said it was too soon to blame this flotilla of ice on global warming, although the coincidence of large collapses of the Antarctic ice shelves with a rapidly changing climate could not be dismissed.

The icebergs are expected to drift towards South America.

A tropical cyclone, codenamed Kerry, which threatened to hit northern Vanuatu has weakened overnight.

However, there are warnings it could intensify.

At last report, the category one cyclone was 230 kilometres north of the capital Port Villa and moving south-west at 10 knots.

Fiji's National Weather Forecasting Centre says the cyclone is expected to pass across Vanuatu with maximum wind gusts to 40 knots, but may gain strength once it reaches open sea.

Homes have been deluged in parts of Wales, Scotland and northern England, with some houses evacuated.

Carlisle in Cumbria is "awash" with water. Police say the city is cut off with no safe routes in or out.

A spate of accidents has shut roads including sections of the M1 and M6, and a P&O ferry ran aground in heavy seas off the west coast of Scotland.

Inflatable boats

Motorists are being advised not to make journeys unless absolutely necessary.

It is the worst weather Cumbria has seen in almost 40 years, fire officials said.

"The worst affected areas have been the east coast and midlands. A lot of timber has fallen and the trees have taken down the power lines," the ESB spokesman said.

"We hope to have power restored to most parts of the country by the end of the day."

A Meteorological Office spokeswoman said that wind gusts of up to 78 miles per hour (125 kilometres per hour) had been recorded at the height of the storm.

Police said flooding and fallen trees had blocked roads but there were no reports of injuries.

(Indiana) - Rising flood water is everywhere -- on the roads, fields or yards and in many basements across the area.

Low-lying regions have been turned into virtual lakes in one of the biggest local flood events in years.

More than 40 Greene County roads were either closed or considered impassable this morning.

Torrential rains Wednesday that drenched the area with between two and three inches of precipitation continued to swell the tributaries of the west fork of the White River and the Eel River to flood levels that haven't been seen in decades. Some areas of the county have received about six inches of rainfall over the past four days in addition to snow melt from the Dec. 22-23 winter storm which has thoroughly saturated the ground.

Greene County is under an emergency flood declaration following action Wednesday afternoon by county commissioner's president Bart Beard. [...]

From Northern Kentucky to the northern Cincinnati suburbs, the region is bracing for still more flooding. Rising water Thursday had already forced people out of their homes, closed roads and canceled classes at some schools.

Forecasters project that more than a month's worth of rain in less than a week will push the Ohio River over its 52-foot flood stage by Sunday. [...]

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Flooding on the Ohio River damaged hundreds of homes and businesses Friday, a soggy calling card left by the winter storm that had brought miserable conditions across much of the central and northeastern United States.

Schools were closed in river towns in both West Virginia and Ohio, and the historic National Road was underwater in Wheeling, where the Ohio was 6 feet above flood stage on Friday morning. The river was expected to rise an additional 3 feet before cresting after lunchtime.

Across the river and about 70 miles downstream, shopkeepers in Marietta, Ohio, stacked sandbags in front of their doors and moved goods off the floors.

"It's not a ghost town, but there are no businesses open that I'm aware of," emergency official Mike Cullums said.

Damage appeared heavy on Wheeling Island, home to 1,000 homes and businesses and a stadium, county emergency officials said. A few hundred homes also had water damage in New Cumberland, about 30 miles north, emergency officials said.

Problems were less severe than in September, when the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan spawned flooding and mudslides, the officials said.

The flooding came as temperatures warmed after a deadly storm crossed from the Plains into New England this week. The messy roads have been blamed in at least 17 traffic deaths, including nine in Oklahoma, and at least three people died in Michigan while shoveling snow. [...]

A pair of storms, meanwhile, were moving in on the West Coast, bringing fears of more beach-eroding high tides and dangerous mudslides. A regional winter storm warning was extended through Monday.

One storm reached the San Francisco Bay area late Thursday and began dumping rain in Southern California early Friday. Road crews cleared an overnight mudslide north of Ventura on Friday, and cars spun out along the rain- slickened Ventura Freeway.

The second storm was expected to move south through Washington and Oregon before reaching California on Friday night. [...]

LAS VEGAS - For a moment Friday, the view over the pool at the Mandalay Bay resort stopped casino workers in their tracks.

"It's snowing in Las Vegas," hotel spokesman Gordon Absher said as a winter storm swept into southern Nevada. "We looked out over the lagoon, and there's snow over the palm trees."

"It's beautiful," said Wendy Williams, an employee at Caesars Palace hotel-casino. "People are all, like, 'What's going on?'"

It's been about a year since a rare desert snowfall on the Las Vegas Strip, and Williams said her husband reported snow was falling heavier in the northwest neighborhood of Summerlin.

A dusting on cars was also reported in hillside neighborhoods across the Las Vegas valley in Henderson.

"We've got it all over," said Lisa Anderson, a Las Vegas police spokeswoman. She said that besides traffic tie-ups and fender-benders, no major problems were reported.

A Dec. 30, 2003, snowstorm was the first in five years to deposit an inch or two of snow on cars, trees, sidewalks and roads.

The National Weather Service predicted rain throughout the weekend in southern Nevada, with wind and heavy snow in the mountains.

(San Jose, Calif.) - Brace yourselves for another wet and wild weekend.

An already waterlogged Bay Area is facing a powerful storm with a one-two punch of heavy rains and fierce winds that could cause flooding and power outages.

Winds could blow up to 60 mph on the coast and in the mountains, and the South Bay could receive as much as four inches of rain this weekend. Water district officials are predicting up to seven inches of rain in the Santa Cruz Mountains, swelling the Guadalupe River. Three to five feet of snow is expected to fall on the Sierra, with five to eight feet expected above 7,000 feet, according to the National Weather Service. [...]

Met Eireann has issued a flood warning in the south of the country, with two and a half inches of rain predicted for some areas.

Forecasters said areas prone to flooding should be on the alert and there would be a particular risk of coastal floods this evening and tonight.

Heavy rains and winds are also expected to batter the rest of the country over the next 24 hours and Met Eireann said local flooding could be experienced in many areas.

There are road closures and stock losses in Otago, with farmers on notice to move animals to higher ground.

Very heavy rain has been falling overnight in the upper Pomohaka catchment, spilling over into catchments west of Lawrence through to Alexandra.

The Otago Regional Council says tributaries of the Pomahaka River and also the Clutha River are in flood.

Duty Flood Manager Chris Arbuckle says that water is now working its way down the system. [...]

VANCOUVER (CP) - Six bus passengers got a terrifying ride Friday when near white-out conditions in the Fraser Valley led to a Greyhound sliding off the freeway and rolling onto its side.

In another accident attributed to blustery conditions that have brought snow and cold temperatures to the usually balmy Vancouver and Victoria, a child was killed on the Trans-Canada Highway east of Kamloops.

The B.C. Ambulance Service said a man, a woman and a nine-year-old girl were killed when a transport truck rolled onto a van. An infant was taken to hospital and is in fair condition, police said. The four are from Vancouver.

The crash closed the highway four kilometres east of Salmon Arm.
There were no serious injuries in the Greyhound accident but passengers had to crawl out a broken front window as the wind howled through an area known locally as the Sumas Prairie.

"I'm just really scared right now," said the young, shaken mother as others helped her keep her infant warm. "He (the bus driver) was driving beautifully and we're seeing all the cars in the ditch and then he says, 'Oh, no.' And then he said, 'Hang on' and we started going and I grabbed my baby and hung on."

Police said the conditions and not the driver were at fault. None of the passengers was seriously injured.

Despite the second day of ice, snow and below freezing temperatures in the Lower Mainland, made worse by biting winds, police in some areas were still telling motorists not to use summer tires. [ ...]

LONDON, England -- A fierce winter storm packing hurricane force winds that swept across northern Europe has left 11 dead two people missing, officials said Sunday.

The storm, accompanied by torrential downpours, caused damage in Britain, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden and Germany before dying out early Sunday.

Six people were reported killed in Sweden after being hit by falling trees and other debris. Four people died in Denmark, two of them in the town of Assens when the roof of a house fell in on them, police said.

In the North Sea city of Logstor, Denmark, authorities reported the highest water level ever in their harbor -- 2.5 meters above normal. Hundreds of people had to evacuate.

The bad weather brought train services to a halt in northern Germany were two canoeists were missing after a strong gust capsized their boat on a lake.

In Britain, the northwestern English city of Carlisle was turned into a lake in the worst flooding to hit that region in 40 years. Most access roads were still under water Sunday, cars were left floating along the streets and more than 100,000 residents had to spend the night without electricity.

Military helicopters rescued at least 15 people from the roofs, including a family with a baby and a 90-year-old man. Other residents fled to safety via boat. Three people died in the city, but police were unable to say whether the deaths were a direct result of the flooding.

Travel on roads, by ship and train were also obstructed. Numerous ferry lines on the North and Baltic seas suspended service, and a ferry grounded off the coast of western Scotland near Cairnryan.

The P&O ferry was finally refloated after more than 30 hours at sea, the coastguard said Sunday.

Two tugs managed to free the European Highlander, with 100 people on board, with the help of the high tide.

High winds from the storm that were clocked at 140 kilometers per hour in Britain, overturned 25 lorries on highways in northern England. Numerous highways and bridges were closed because of the danger.

The storm swept in as northern Germany enjoyed its warmest January night in more than a century with temperatures over 10 Celsius.

Ferries from Rostock, Germany, to Gedser, Denmark, were cancelled in the Baltic but were resumed Sunday morning. The same was true for the ferry line from Sassnitz on the German island of Ruegen to Sweden's Trelleborg.

In the North Sea, ferries between Hirtshals, Denmark, to Larvik, Norway, also remained in their harbors Saturday.

Meanwhile, authorities in Russia's second city, Saint Petersburg, breathed a sigh of relief Sunday after high water levels that threatened the former imperial capital with flooding began to recede.

Alarm bells had rung as water levels in the river Neva rose to within 30 centimeters (12 inches) of the flooding mark of 2.6 meters, causing city officials to close off embankments to traffic and shut down six subway stations.

RENO, Nev. - Areas of the Sierra Nevada, famous for paralyzing amounts of snowfall, have been hit with a dumping like they haven't seen in generations, with steep drifts stranding an Amtrak train, knocking out the Reno airport and shutting down major highways across the mountains.

The string of moisture-laden storms has dropped up to 19 feet of snow at elevations above 7,000 feet since Dec. 28 and 6 1/2 feet at lower elevations in the Reno area. Meteorologists said it was the most snow the Reno-Lake Tahoe area has seen since 1916.

"I've lived here for almost 40 years and I've never seen anything like it," Peter Walenta, 69, said Sunday from his home in Stateline, on the southern end of Lake Tahoe. "This baby just seems to be stretching on forever. Right now I'm looking out the window and it's dumping."

Storms also have caused flooding in Southern California and Arizona, deadly avalanches in Utah and ice damage and flooding in the Ohio Valley.

The weather was blamed for at least eight weekend deaths in Southern California, including a homeless man killed Sunday by a landslide. Along the storms' eastward track, avalanches killed two people Saturday in Utah, authorities said.

An avalanche Sunday afternoon killed a 13-year-old boy after knocking him from a ski lift at the Las Vegas Ski & Snowboard Resort, 45 miles northwest of Las Vegas. No other injuries have been reported.

A lull in the storm allowed the reopening Sunday of Interstate 80 over Donner Summit and U.S. 50 over Echo Summit after the highways were closed off and on for more than a day. The highways connect Sacramento, Calif., to Reno.

"The snowbanks along Interstate 80 are about 8 to 10 feet high. It's like you're going through a maze," said Jane Dulaney, spokeswoman for the Rainbow Lodge west of Donner Summit.

About 25 motorists were rescued by National Guard members in Humvees after they become stranded overnight on U.S. Highway 395 about 20 miles south of Reno, Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper Jeff Bowers said. Motorists had to wait up to six hours until rescuers could reach them after daylight Sunday.

"That would have been as scary as it gets to be out there alone in those conditions," Bowers said.

The California Highway Patrol reported 720 crashes Sunday night, more than three times the number of accidents during the previous Sunday when roads were dry.

More than 220 Amtrak passengers were back in Sacramento on Sunday after spending the night stuck in their train in deep snow west of Donner Summit, spokesman Marc Magliari said.

One car of the California Zephyr, eastbound from Oakland, Calif., to Chicago, derailed in the snow Saturday evening. No one was hurt. Amtrak officials moved the passengers to other cars and the train reversed course and returned to Sacramento about 6 a.m.

Because of the derailment, a westbound Zephyr had to stop in Reno and its roughly 140 passengers completed their trip to California by bus. Service from several stations in Ventura, as well as trains from Los Angeles to Burbank, were canceled for Monday.

Reno-Tahoe International Airport was closed for 12 hours overnight for the second time in a week, and only the third time in 40 years, because plows could not keep up with the heavy snowfall, spokeswoman Trish Tucker said. [...]

Flash flood warnings were posted throughout Southern California. Residents of a mobile home park in Santa Clarita, northwest of Los Angeles, were evacuated Sunday after 5 feet of water spilled in from a creek.

"An eight-foot masonry wall that was protecting the structures gave way and water is rushing into all the houses," said Inspector John Mancha. Authorities weren't immediately sure how many people were evacuated.

A two-story home collapsed in the Studio City area above the San Fernando Valley. A man and his two children were pulled from the rubble with minor injuries.

Elsewhere, flooding along the Ohio River had chased hundreds of Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky residents from their homes. Meteorologists predicted the river would reach its highest level in eight years at Louisville, Ky., this week at about 5 feet above flood stage. Cincinnati was already more than 2 feet above its 52-foot flood stage Sunday, with forecasters expecting a crest at 57.5 feet.

Ohio Gov. Bob Taft declared a state of emergency in 28 of Ohio's 88 counties this weekend, increasing to 49 the number of counties eligible for state assistance cleaning up from the storms, Ohio Emergency Management Agency spokesman Mark Patchen said Sunday. Ohio authorities believe carbon monoxide poisoning killed five people using generators for electricity since Friday.

Indiana officials said some of the worst flooding since 1937 had isolated pockets across the southern part of the state, forcing hundreds of people from their homes.

The storm that fed the flooding also knocked out power last week in parts of western and northern Ohio. Utilities said Sunday that about 66,000 customers remained without electricity, down from a peak of 250,000. More than 37,000 customers were still blacked out Sunday in Pennsylvania, and 56,500 were without power in Indiana.

LOS ANGELES - As many as 200 vehicles got stuck in deep snow early today in the San Bernardino Mountains as the latest in a series of storms struck California.

Snow piled up 3 to 4 feet deep along a 15-mile stretch of state highway between the Snow Valley ski resort and Big Bear dam, said Tracey Martinez, a spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County fire department.

"People were panicking and calling 911 on their cell phones,'' Martinez said. "It's going to take us awhile to get all the folks out of there.''

No injuries were reported as rescue crews used tracked vehicles to pick up the snowbound motorists in the mountains about 90 miles east of Los Angeles. [...]

A fourth day of thrashing thunderstorms began to take a heavier toll on Southern California on Sunday with at least three deaths blamed on the rain, as flooding and mudslides forced road closures and emergency crews carried out harrowing rescue operations. [...]

The storms had stalled over an area of the Pacific Ocean on Sunday evening, a few hundred miles off the coast of Point Conception, west of Santa Barbara, said Bruce Rockwell, a specialist with the National Weather Service.

"It's stationary off the coast and constantly pumps in moist water from the south," he said.

Forecasters had originally said that some areas of Southern California might receive more than 20 inches of precipitation over the weekend. Although they later reduced that estimate, a campground near Mt. Wilson, Opids Camp, received 20.82 inches of precipitation between 4 p.m. Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday.

In that same time period, downtown Los Angeles received 4.49 inches of rain, Beverly Hills 7.79 inches, Santa Monica 4.7 inches, Chatsworth 5.81 inches, Claremont 7.51 inches and Lancaster 2.36 inches.

Continued downpours were expected through Tuesday, when the jet stream airflow from the north was expected to start pushing the storm inland toward Nevada.

Southern California has been drenched by a string of storms that began in late December and have been only sporadically interrupted by clear skies.

The current dousing, which began Thursday, has been the heaviest. More than 15 inches have fallen in Los Angeles in the first nine days of 2005, as much as the average annual rainfall downtown.

All across the Southland, residents dealt with rockslides, debris flows, downed trees, power outages and mandatory evacuations, though there were few serious injuries.

Mudslides, a sinkhole and other water damage forced Metrolink and Amtrak to cancel some train routes serving Los Angeles and Ventura Counties today.

In Orange County, a combination of storm runoff and big surf caused health officials to close Corona del Mar State Beach in Newport Beach and Capistrano County Beach in Dana Point because of sewage pipe leaks. [...]

JACKSON, Miss. - Highs winds associated with a fast moving storm systems left behind some isolated pockets of damage Friday night, with the National Weather Service confirming that a small tornado touched down in the metropolitan Jackson area.

Damage to houses, mobile homes and farm buildings was reported Saturday in central and south Mississippi from the storm system that swept through the region. Rain totals ranged up to an inch in some areas, according to the weather service.

There were no reported injuries.

Officials with the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said small tornado touched down in Jackson about 5:30 p.m. Friday at the height of heavy rain and winds. At least one home was destroyed and about 10 others suffering some damage.

Denmark, southern Sweden and the British Isles bore the brunt of the conditions, with 100 people forced to spend the night on a ferry after it ran aground in southwest Scotland, while a Dutch freighter issued a mayday call off the Danish coast.

In northwestern England, meanwhile, the centre of the city of Carlisle was largely underwater, with locals sheltering on upper floors, watching cars float past in the street below.

Four people were killed in Denmark -- two motorists who died when trees crashed onto their cars, and two others who were killed when a roof blew off a building, police said.

In southern Sweden, two motorists were also killed when trees fell on their cars, and a third died when a car hit him as he tried to remove a fallen tree from a road, media reported.

Copenhagen's Kastrup airport closed down for several hours, as did the Malmoe Sturup airport in southern Sweden, as hurricane force winds of up to 151 kilometers (94 miles) an hour lashed the region and authorities urged people to stay indoors if possible.

Danish sea rescue services reported that a Dutch freighter off Denmark's west coast had called for assistance after reporting a fire on board in heavy seas.

The 15 crew evacuated the ship and were in a lifeboat at 10:00 pm (2100 GMT) waiting to be picked up by rescue ships.

In southern Sweden, around 280,000 households were without electricity, while rail services were suspended and traffic on the Oeresund bridge linking Copenhagen to southern Sweden was stopped, as well as dozens of ferry services.

In Germany's northern state of Schleswig-Holstein which borders Denmark train traffic was halted, while road traffic came to a standstill on the North and Baltic Sea coasts, on the bridge over the Kiel Canal linking the two seas, and on the one connecting the Baltic Sea island of Fehmarn to the continent.

Firefighters said they dealt with 300 emergencies within a few hours, 250 alone in the state capital Kiel, mainly after trees were unrooted and billboards blown away. No injuries were reported.

Electricity was cut in several areas after winds gusted up to 161 kilometers per hour (100 mph).

In Ireland, more than 50,000 people were also without electricity -- around 20,000 in the Republic of Ireland and 30,000 in the North.

In Scotland, 43 passengers and 57 crew looked set to be spending Saturday night on board a P and O ferry, which set off from Larne in Northern Ireland before running aground at Cairnryan, Loch Ryan.

No one was injured, but heavy seas meant tugs would not be able to get close to the European Highlander vessel to pull it free from the shingle beach until Sunday morning, P and O said.

Around the British Isles, trucks toppled over, river banks burst, people were evacuated from flooded houses and uprooted trees blocked dozens of roads as gales reached 140 kilometres (85 miles) an hour.

The city of Carlisle in far northwest England was worst affected, although local police said that the waters appeared to be receding late Saturday.

Around 1,000 homes in the city had been flooded, as well as a further 100 in other areas, a spokeswoman for Britain's Environment Agency said, with the Royal Air Force preparing for a possible helicopter evacuation of some people.

"We've had people phoning up reporting that the water is starting to creep up the stairs in their homes. Some houses have been evacuated," a spokesman for Cumbria Police said, describing the town centre as "awash".

About a dozen trucks overturned on a motorway in Cumbria and several roads were blocked because of flooding and trees falling.

"At the moment, high-sided vehicles should not travel at all. Our advice to drivers of ordinary vehicles is to only travel if your journey is absolutely necessary," the police spokesman warned.

Elsewhere, the Netherlands was also hit by storms, with a German teenager injured as he was hang-gliding at Zeewolde, in the centre of the country.

Experts say the giant waves could destroy towns, submerge forests, rip up beaches and deposit millions of tonnes of sand far inland - The Ground Shakes, and Then Hell Breaks Loose

One day, the ocean floor 100 kilometres west of Vancouver Island will rupture at a point where two of the moving plates that make up the earth's crust have been stuck since 1700.

The energy will be released all at once, the ocean floor will heave and the earth will shake for several minutes.

A tsunami will begin to spread in all directions. Then:

- Residents on the outer coast of Vancouver Island will head for high ground when the shaking stops. There is no time for evacuation warnings.

- In the quake, the island coast falls by an average of one metre, making structures more vulnerable to big waves.

- The tsunami reaches shore in 20 minutes or less.

- The sea may draw back for a few minutes, exposing ocean floor that is normally covered. Then a towering wave will thunder into the shore, only a few metres high in some places, as high as 10 to 15 metres (33 to 50 feet) in others, as it reaches shallow waters.

- Anyone on the beach or on low rocky outcrops when the waves hit is swept into the ocean.

- Beachfront homes and resorts near Tofino are swamped. Flimsier buildings are smashed.

- Hot Springs Cove, north of Tofino, is largely destroyed.

- Zeballos, a small village at sea level in a narrowing valley, suffers severe damage as residents huddle on the mountain slopes.

- At Gold River, Tahsis and Port Alice, some docks and wharves are lifted above sea level, others are permanently submerged.

- The Pacific Rim Highway is swamped where it runs close to the beach.

- The waves undermine shore lines and river banks, toppling millions of trees.

- The tsunami begins to lose energy as it rounds Vancouver Island, especially at the south end. In the northeast, the waves are still up to seven metres high when they crash into Port Hardy, Port McNeill and Alert Bay.

- In the south, Esquimalt and Victoria see waves as high as two to three metres, and Vancouver less than a metre high.

(Australia) - THREE beaches were closed on the Sunshine Coast yesterday as rough seas and strong winds combined to make hell-raising conditions for lifeguards and swimmers.

At Caloundra, Coolum and Maroochydore, lifeguards reported strong southeasterly winds and choppier than usual seas as cyclone activity off the central Queensland coast swept up demanding beach conditions.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology, severe tropical cyclone Kerry was slowly moving west last night after being located about 1050km east of Mackay at 6pm.

The storm was about 1100km north-northeast of the Sunshine Coast but its effects were being felt on local beaches.

Forecaster Rao Nagulapalli said gale force wind gusts of up to 190km/h were being generated near the centre of the cyclone, which is expected to remain severe for the next two days.

(UK) - TWO elderly women died and families were evacuated by RAF helicopters yesterday after floods engulfed Carlisle. Torrential rain and high winds which hit Scotland over the weekend also lashed the city.

Some parts of Carlisle were under up to 8ft of water.

Police said several thousand people had abandoned their homes.

Among them was Alan Hargraves, 45, who had to throw his front door keys to a man in a rescue boat so they could open the door and get him out.

He said: ' Water started seeping up through the carpets and coming in through the air vents.

'By about 11 or 12am, it had got up to about four feet.

'The fridge had toppled over and bags of vegetables were floating round the kitchen.

'Outside, you could see car roofs glistening on the surface and rescue boats picking people up.'

Two elderly women were found dead in their flood-affected homes while a 63year-old man was also killed when a barn blew down near the Scottish Border.

A Red Cross spokesman said 150 people were seen at two reception centres in the city and 17 people had been treated for cut and bruises.

Environment minister Elliot Morley visited Carlisle yesterday and compared the floods to the deluge that hit Boscastle, Cornwall, last August.

Damage He said: 'There has been two months' worth of rain in 24 hours, or something like that.

'The extensive amount of rain in such a short period has overwhelmed everything.'

The cost of damage in Carlisle could run into tens of millions of pounds, the Association of British Insurers said. [...]

LA CONCHITA, Calif. (AP) -- A huge mudslide crashed down on homes in a coastal hamlet with terrifying force Monday, killing at least one person and leaving up to 12 missing as a Pacific storm hammered Southern California for a fourth straight day.

Ventura County Fire Department Chief Bob Roper said at least six and as many as a dozen residents were missing in the mudslide that pummeled a four-block area of homes in tiny La Conchita, about 70 miles northwest of Los Angeles. Nine people were injured, including a 60-year-old man who was buried for three hours.

"It lasted a long time. It was slow-moving. The roofs of the houses were crashing and creaking real loud and there was a huge rumble sound," said Robert Cardoza, a construction worker who was clearing debris from a nearby highway.

The mudslide brought the number of dead from the latest wave of California storms to 10. The storms have sent rainfall totals to astonishing levels, turning normally mild Southern California into a giant flood zone.

The hillside in La Conchita cascaded down like a brown river as authorities were evacuating about 200 residents from the area. Trees and vegetation were carried away, leaving huge gashes of raw earth on the bluff.

Some residents made their way from the area clutching pets, luggage or clothing as the huge mass of mud bore down. Some huddled together or cried as they talked on cell phones. Fifteen to 20 houses were hit by the slide. [...]

The percentage of Earth's land area stricken by serious drought more than doubled from the 1970s to the early 2000s, according to a new analysis by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Widespread drying occurred over much of Europe and Asia, Canada, western and southern Africa, and eastern Australia. Rising global temperatures appear to be a major factor, says NCAR's Aiguo Dai, lead author of the study.

Dai will present the new findings on January 12 at the American Meteorological Society's annual meeting in San Diego. The work also appears in the December issue of the Journal of Hydrometeorology in a paper also authored by NCAR's Kevin Trenberth and Taotao Qian. The study was supported by the National Science Foundation, NCAR's primary sponsor.

Dai and colleagues found that the fraction of global land experiencing very dry conditions (defined as -3 or less on the Palmer Drought Severity Index) rose from about 10-15% in the early 1970s to about 30% by 2002. Almost half of that change is due to rising temperatures rather than decreases in rainfall or snowfall, according to Dai.

"Global climate models predict increased drying over most land areas during their warm season, as carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases increase," says Dai. "Our analyses suggest that this drying may have already begun."

Even as drought has expanded across Earth's land areas, the amount of water vapor in the air has increased over the past few decades. The average global precipitation has also risen slightly. However, as Dai notes, "surface air temperatures over global land areas have increased sharply since the 1970s." The large warming increases the tendency for moisture to evaporate from land areas. Together, the overall area experiencing either very dry or very wet conditions could occupy a greater fraction of Earth's land areas in a warmer world, Dai says.

Though most of the Northern Hemisphere has shown a drying in recent decades, the United States has bucked that trend, becoming wetter overall during the last 50 years, says Dai. The moistening is especially notable between the Rocky Mountains and Mississippi River. Other parts of the world showing a moistening trend include Argentina and parts of western Australia. These trends are related more to increased precipitation than to temperature, says Dai.

"Droughts and floods are extreme climate events that are likely to change more rapidly than the average climate," says Dai. "Because they are among the world's costliest natural disasters and affect a very large number of people each year, it is important to monitor them and perhaps predict their variability." [...]

LOS ANGELES - At least 14 people have died in heavy rain and snow storms that have been battering California, sparking deadly landslides and flash floods, authorities said Tuesday.

Authorities raised the death toll as the bad weather continued to roil the state.

"We have at least nine dead in Los Angeles County," said Lieutenant Ed Winter of the Los Angeles County Coroner's Department.

He said there were at least four dead in nearby Ventura county, where a mudslide fell onto the town of La Conchita on Monday burying about 15 homes where many people are still missing.

And one person was reported dead in the state capital of Sacramento, city firefighters said.

The storms have stretched emergency services across the region as they rally to rescue motorists trapped by rising flood waters and search for survivors in La Conchita.

MOSCOW, January 11 (Itar-Tass) - A hurricane has left more than 1,500 inhabited localities without electricity in the Pskov Region of Russia, Itar-Tass was told on Tuesday at the Press Service of the Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations.

The hurricane had swept over Pskov Region on January 9. The wind velocity reached twenty-eight metres a second. As many as 296 electric transmission lines were damaged and about four thousand transformer substations were de-energized. Twenty-four districts with a population of 67,000 were left without electricity.

LONDON - Gale-force winds blew a heavyweight truck off a bridge Tuesday in Northern Ireland, killing the driver, police said.

The bridge crossing the river Foyle in Derry, the province's second-largest city, was closed after the accident.

A female driver was also seriously injured on another Derry bridge when her truck collided with a car.

More than 5,000 homes remained without electricity late on Tuesday with the storm, which has also hit the Republic of Ireland, expected to continue unabated through the night.

Four young children were among at least eight people killed in a bushfire that was burning out of control on South Australia's Eyre Peninsula last night.

All the victims are believed to have been incinerated in cars as they tried to flee the flames.

There were fears the death toll would rise as seven people were reported missing and fire continued to rage out of control on a wide front, threatening more lives and property.

Police confirmed last night that three bodies found in a burnt-out car at the town of Poonindie were those of a woman and two young children. The bodies of two other children, aged two and four, and their grandfather were found in a car on road near the town of Wanilla. Two adults died in another car nearby.

Elsewhere, about 20 houses were destroyed and terrified residents of at least one town leapt into the sea to escape the flames.

After a day of blistering 44-degree heat and high winds, 300 firefighters were trying to contain the blaze, which destroyed 100,000 hectares in the state's worst fire since Ash Wednesday of February 1983, when 28 people were killed. [...]

In Tijuana, two massive mudslides claimed the lives of three children.

Two girls, one 11-years-old and other eight-years-old, were killed when fast-moving mud blanketed their makeshift home.

The Mexican Red Cross tried to rescue them, but by the time help reached the children, it was too late.

A five-year-old also died Tuesday in another mudslide.

OVERTON, Nev. (AP) - The torrential storm that caused the deadly mudslide in California is sweeping across other Western states, bringing flooding that has gobbled up homes and washed out roads.

The heaviest flooding was concentrated in the area where Nevada, Arizona and Utah meet. No serious injuries were reported, but one man was missing in Utah. A skier was missing for a third day in the deep snow of rugged western Colorado.

In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday surveyed the devastation caused by a huge mudslide that killed at least 10 people. The overall death toll in California from the storms is 28 people.

Floodwaters from a swollen river rose in this small Nevada town about 80 kilometres from Las Vegas on Wednesday, even as evacuated residents started returning home.

An estimated 100 homhges were damaged, destroyed or cut off by flooding in the Overton area. A police helicopter had to rescue three people after they became trapped in their cars and homes. [...]

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Electricity was restored to most homes in an Arctic village Wednesday, four days after the community lost power in a fierce blizzard and was thrown into the deep freeze.

Drifting snow prevented a cargo plane from landing in Kaktovik, a village of 300 people more than 200 miles above the Arctic Circle. But an Alaska Air National Guard helicopter delivered technicians and equipment on Tuesday.

Within a day, the technicians were able to restore electricity to about three-quarters of the village. The outage may have been caused by power lines slapping together and arcing during the storm, officials said.

Some of the glaciers in the mountains have lost 70 per cent of their volume in the past 100 years, scientists say.

The Rocky Mountain glaciers provide most of Western Canada's fresh water.

"Every year there is more ice melting than going in. Over the last five years it's accelerated rapidly. The glaciers are really retreating," said University of Calgary climatologist Shawn Marshall.

Weather records show that the average temperature in the Rockies has risen about 1.5 degrees over the last century.

The mountain ecosystem is also seeing changes in the form of massive summer forest fires, invasive species such as the pine beetle, and changing wildlife habitat.

"Most people who live in this country have no appreciation of how crucial this is, and what kind of impact to could have on all of us," said Bob Sandford, a life-long mountain resident and historian.

The changes are evident in the mountains, Marshall says, and any effort to reverse those changes could take decades.

"The sooner we get this idea, quicker we'll be able to reverse things. But we are sort of on a path right now for the next few decades," said Marshall.

CHICAGO - A man working at a CTA maintenance facility suffered a jolt after lightning struck a nearby storage building.

The man was alert and conscious when he was transported from the East Garfield Park facility at 3920 W. Lake to Mount Sinai Hospital.

Two schools and 160 people were also affected by lightning strikes in suburban Riverside.

Central Elementary School and Hauser Junior High School were closed for the day, school officials said.

According to Commonwealth Edison spokesman John Dewey, the power outage was caused by a downed distribution line on the 2400 block of South 8th Avenue in North Riverside. He did not know what exactly caused the outage, but said it appeared as if lightning struck the line.

ComEd first received calls about the outages around 8:24 a.m. Power was restored at 9:54 a.m.

(Louisiana) - A tornado touched down in Claiborne Parish late Wednesday night, demolishing at least one mobile home and injuring an undetermined number of people, Claiborne Sheriff Ken Bailey said.

"One has touched down here. We don't know how many houses."

The tornado hit Harris Road just south of Homer and along Airport Loop and Bream Island Road near Lake Claiborne southeast of Homer, Bailey said.

Nearby in Webster Parish, law enforcement officials reported to the National Weather Service office in Shreveport at 10:35 p.m. that hail measuring 0.88 of an inch was falling six miles northeast of Minden.

The storms briefly knocked out power in areas including Winston County, where the wind peeled part of the roof off a building in Haleyville and sent a trampoline flying across a street.

"Garbage cans were going everywhere, and they were those really big, green ones with wheels," said Debra Hood, city clerk in Haleyville. "There was a lot of rain all of a sudden that lasted for about 20 minutes. It was really blowing hard." [...]

Big waves and strong winds produced by Cyclone Kerry in the Coral Sea are expected to batter the far northern NSW and south-east Queensland coasts on Friday.

The Category 1 cyclone is moving closer to the southern coast of Queensland and a gale warning has been issued for coastal waters between Sandy Cape on Fraser Island and Wooli in NSW.

Queensland's Tropical Cyclone Warning Centre meteorologist Peter Otto said the winds were expected to freshen on Friday and reach gale force in the afternoon.

"Associated with the strong winds on the southern Queensland coast and the northern NSW coast we could see swells of up to four to five metres," he said.

"It could be really quite dangerous out on the water."

Some saltwater inundation is also expected on the morning's high tide.

Wind gusts near the centre of the cyclone were estimated to be up to 120kph. [...]

VENICE, Italy (Reuters) -- Gondolas are running aground and hotel docks hang in midair as Italy's lagoon city Venice, more commonly awash at high tide, dries out because of good weather and an unusual combination of planetary influences.

Only the Grand Canal, Venice's biggest and most famous waterway, can still take water traffic, and the falling canal levels have given rise to terms such as "ghost town" and "desert" in local papers.

"The phenomenon is due to low pressure, that is, the good weather that coincides with the syzygy, the alignment of the moon, earth and sun," said Venice's tides office.

The new moon this week has helped push water levels to their lowest point in more than a decade, nearly 2.5 feet (80 cm) below sea level, it said. The lowest fall on record was 4.1 feet (1.21 meters) below sea level in 1934.

The city assured tourists that water levels would soon start rising again, restoring the romantic look they expect.

[...] The record-breaking weather in B.C. saw wind chills up to about -35C on the coast and up to -50C in other regions of B.C. on Friday and Saturday.

Freezing rain and up to 10 centimetres of snow was expected to fall overnight Saturday on B.C.'s west coast.

Cold temperature records were broken this weekend in Cranbrook, Revelstoke, Kamloops, Kelowna, Campbell River, Whistler and many other areas of B.C.

"It has been bitterly cold, we've set records ranging from temperatures down around minus 42 in the north to even down in Vancouver to minus 10," said David Jones, spokesman for Environment Canada on Friday.

HALIFAX - The Maritime provinces are in for another blizzard. This one that will likely dump as much as 40 centimetres of snow across the region before it passes through.

Environment Canada says the storm will begin hitting eastern New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island on Sunday night.

Halifax may get as much as 40 centimetres of snow by Monday. There will be frequent whiteouts, Environment Canda said.

Air travel is also expected to be delayed right across the East Coast and in Newfoundland as the storm moves in.

Saint John, N.B., can expect up to 25 centimetres before the storm tapers to flurries on Monday, while P.E.I. will face up to 35 centimetres.

Winds may gust to 90 km/h.

The storm is rooted in a low pressure system developing off the U.S. eastern seaboard and will grow as it moves into Canada.

It's expected to arrive in southwestern Newfoundland on Monday with winds in excess of 100 km/h.

SEOUL - Snowstorms on Sunday shut down a third of South Korea's local airports with dozens of domestic flights cancelled, officials at the Korea Airport Corp said.

Five of the 15 local airports were shut for hours by heavy snow, strong winds and poor visibility with 86 flights cancelled, they said.

Affected were the airports of Gimhae, Ulsan, Pohang, Yeosu and Mokpo -- mostly in the eastern and southern provinces where up to 100 centimetersinches) of snow fell. [...]

SEATTLE -- Rain, wind, ice, sleet and snow buffeted Washington on Monday, bringing ice storms to much of the Cascades and Eastern Washington and a threat of serious flooding in the western half of the state.

The National Weather Service issued flood warnings for the Nooksack, Satsop, Skagit, Skykomish, Snoqualmie, Stillaguamish and Tolt rivers in the Puget Sound area, and for the Bogachiel River near La Push and the Skokomish River in Mason County.

Heavy rains were forecast to continue through Wednesday in Western Washington, with up to 10 inches total for the storm in some areas. That could cause major flooding of many rivers, the weather service said. [...]

ROCHESTER, N.Y. - A deep Arctic freeze refused to relinquish its grip over the Northeast and Midwest early Tuesday, keeping teeth chattering and temperatures at bone-chilling lows.

At least three weekend deaths were blamed on the cold in Michigan.

After a relatively mild winter in the Northeast, brisk winds made it feel as cold as minus-20 degrees in western New York and minus-45 degrees in the Adirondacks in northern New York.

"To some people this is quite a shock, but much of our hardy upstate population is used to this. They knew it would come eventually," Buffalo's chief meteorologist, Tom Niziol, said Monday.

Cold air rushing over Lake Ontario and Lake Erie produced as much as 14 inches of snowfall in ski-resort communities in western and central New York.

Upstate New York "has had a great winter so far — now we're getting the real deal!" James Lattimore said cheerfully as he cleared a half-foot of snow off the pavement in front of his brother's apartment in Rochester's Corn Hill section.

The cold blast will extend through Tuesday, with temperatures spiking as high as 30 degrees Wednesday. "Then we go back into a deep freeze for the end of the week with temperatures not making it out of the teens," Niziol said.

Temperatures were well below normal Tuesday across Michigan, the National Weather Service said. Detroit Metropolitan Airport, where the normal low is 17 degrees, had an early Tuesday reading of 1 degree.

In Michigan's Wayne County, a man in his 50s who was believed to be homeless was found frozen to death Sunday in a grassy area near a sidewalk.

In Oceana County in western Michigan, a 24-year-old man and a 19-year-old woman were found dead Saturday, apparently from carbon monoxide from a propane heater used to heat a trailer.

The frozen body of Kathryn Jeanne Gates was found in Minneapolis on Sunday morning, hours after her motorized scooter tipped over and she was unable to get back up, police said. Overnight temperatures were below zero. An autopsy was planned for Tuesday to determine the cause of death.

On Monday, the mercury in Minnesota flirted with the state's record low. The temperature dropped to 54 degrees below zero in Embarrass — not cold enough for a record, but cold enough to drive homeless people into shelters and cause hundreds of car batteries to fail.

The chill was felt as far south as Florida, where low temperatures Tuesday morning were reported in the high 20s and low 30s for northern Florida.

Las Tunas, Water reservoirs in Cuba's eastern province of Las Tunas contain a mere 24 percent of their storage capacity —352.9 million cubic meters-, according to the local office of the Institute of Hydraulic Resources.

The entity has warned that if the adverse climatic situation continues it will become much more complicated to supply the vital liquid to the population, as well as the agricultural and industrial sectors.

The severe drought has dealt a serious blow to both farming and ranching. [...]

VANCOUVER - While other parts of Canada suffer through deep freezes, blizzards and ice, British Columbia is being pounded by what meteorologists are calling a 'tropical punch,' warm, wet air coming from the western Pacific.

"The consecutive days of rain is the key to this storm," said David Jones of Environment Canada.

People on Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland are struggling to cope with the deluge, which has dumped as much as 100 millimetres of rain in the past few days in some areas.

Environment Canada warns there's more to come. Forecasters say twice the rain that would normally fall during the entire month of January might pelt down over the next three days ñ as much as 300 mm.

Some communities, including Richmond, outside Vancouver, handed out sandbags so people could build dikes around their homes.

"We're not floating away just yet," said Ted Townsend, a spokesperson for the City of Richmond. "But the flooding is widespread throughout the community."

The downpour shut down many roads in the Lower Mainland, while winter storms further inland caused numerous problems.

A mudslide shut down a Vancouver Island highway Tuesday and submerged some parts ramps onto the Trans-Canada Highway near Burnaby. Several major streets closed in Vancouver, Surrey and Langley.

The storm dumped freezing rain and heavy snow on the B.C. Interior, forcing highway closures around Prince George, Revelstoke and the Kootenay Pass in the province's southeast corner.

Environment Canada says the rain isn't expected to taper off until Friday afternoon.

A convoy of 40 trucks returning from Banda Aceh – the aid distribution hub for Aceh – to the North Sumatran capital of Medan had been forced to stop overnight, midway through its journey, because of floods, IOM spokesman Chris Lom said.

"They were due back this morning but they called in to say they were going to be delayed," Mr Lom said.

"They didn't know how long."

Mr Lom believed the convoy, which was supposed to make its journey in 24 hours, was stuck near the border between Aceh and North Sumatra.

Another convoy of trucks due to leave Medan today full of relief supplies would not depart until it had received word the returning vehicles had been able to make it through the floods, he said.

A great deal of recent international focus had been on the impact of terrorist threats and a separatist insurgency on relief efforts, but Mr Lom said aid workers were more concerned with the weather.

"Flooding is a bigger problem than security," he said.

"It's not an insurmountable problem, not a major one, but if the flooding gets much worse, it will be." [...]

GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) - Rising flood waters forced thousands to abandon their homes yesterday while schools, stores and government offices closed, and the only state-owned radio station went off the air as water sloshed into the studios.

Hangars and runways flooded at the Ogle Municipal Airport east of Georgetown, forcing the airport's closure. Georgetown's main airport was still open and accepting flights.

Police reported at least one road fatality Monday, when a minibus skidded off a highway and crashed into a house, killing an unidentified passenger. A military helicopter photographing flooding in the region was also damaged when it made a crash landing on the lower east coast Monday. Neither the pilot nor co-pilot was injured.

"Everything is covered in this house, and little fish are swimming all over the place," said computer specialist Arlene Williams, who moved to a neighbour's second-floor apartment.

Although dozens of schools and public buildings were being set up as shelters in the capital of Georgetown and flooded coastal areas, most residents were staying with friends and family.

Rains that began Friday night were forecast to continue throughout the week. [...]

NORTH VANCOUVER - Flooding, mudslides and avalanches continue to take their toll in vast areas of British Columbia.

In North Vancouver a state of emergency has been declared after a mudslide destroyed two homes Wednesday morning. One woman was killed when she was trapped under debris in her home, and there are fears the mountainside is so unstable, other homes may be affected.

In the Southern Interior, an ice jam in a river near Keremeos, has resulted in water spilling over the dikes and flooding homes. Some people have had to be plucked from rooftops by rescue helicopters.

The province has announced it will provide financial aid through its disaster relief program to anyone affected.

The devastation at the base of Mount Seymour is enormous. The neighborhood is built in tiers on a hillside. The highest street sits above a wide greenbelt of evergreens. One section of that forest is simply gone, washed away by the mudslide that swept down the mountain.

What's left is the river of mud that crashed down onto the street below, smashing into two homes, leaving them destroyed in its wake. Officials have been forced to evacuate more than 80 homes.

Bill Maurer woke up just before 3:30 a.m., hearing what he thought was the rumble of a snowplow. When he started hearing sirens, he went outside and saw emergency crews pulling a neighbour from what was left of his home.

"It was pretty dramatic," said Maurer, "he must have been on the upper floor of the house. He was covered in mud. He looked like an earthquake victim."

A woman who also lives in the house was rescued after phoning for help from her cellphone. Crews found her because she described the debris she was buried in. A third person from that home is still missing.

Residents of the second destroyed home managed to crawl out after the mudslide swept into their bedroom, picking up the bed and surfing it across the room.

Adrian Thompson, who lives about 50 metres from where the slide occurred, said he was awakened by the sound of loud rumblings and snapping branches.

He said he spotted a young couple with their baby standing in the middle of the street. They told him the mudslide streamed right through their home.

"They said it picked up the bed and the bed was surfed across the room, and I guess picked him up, and he ended up lying next to her and they somehow crawled out of there."

Thompson said they were shaken up and suffered some scratches and bruises. He took them into his home for some medical treatment. They're now staying with another family.

Premier Gordon Campbell says he was struck by the enormity of the destruction after touring the area.

"You see bundles of clothes that were probably in a closet that are now lying there, or a mattress that's now lying there. You can picture the people that were there ... being swept out of your home like that at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning is hard for must of us to comprehend," said Campbell.

The slide occurred because of a mixture of weather conditions in recent days.

Last week, snow and cold temperatures froze the ground. Then 200 milliletres of rain fell in less than 48 hours. With the ground frozen, it has nowhere to go.

"The power of water we've seen in the last month around the world, what it can do. This is another example of the heavy rainfall, melting snow," said RCMP Const. Tom Seaman who was on site first thing.

The rain did dry up for much of the day, but there is more forecast. A heavy rainfall warning has been issued for Wednesday night, raising concerns that another slide might occur.

Environment Canada has warned that as much as 300 mm – twice the rain that would normally fall during the entire month of January – might fall over the next three days.

Also on Wednesday, about 100 residents were forced to flee the area around Keremeos in B.C.'s Southern Interior after ice jams made a river overflow and flooded the only road leading into the community.

Roads have been closed by flooding across the Lower Mainland, while freezing rain and snow has closed many other roads and highways across the province.

The US has voiced objections to "multiple" references to climate change in drafting documents for the global conference in Kobe, Japan on disaster reduction, said Mark Lagon, deputy assistant secretary in the State Department bureau of international organization affairs.

He said the United States believed climate change was a "well-known" controversy and that there were "other venues" to discuss it.

"Our desire is that this does not distract from this process," Lagon said.

He said other countries including Australia and Iran had also "raised concerns" about references to climate change.

"The US is not the only country asking questions about climate references," he said.

"This is not the dominant controversy" at the conference, Lagon said. "But there are different views."

US President George W. Bush rejected the Kyoto protocol on global warming after he took office in 2001, saying it would cost US industry too much.

The protocol calls for emission cuts of six key gasses. It comes into force in February after the agreement of Russia.

The US stance has infuriated Europe and other allies in the industrialized world which have signed up for Kyoto.

Some 4,500 experts and officials from around 150 countries are meeting in Kobe and are expected to make a list of targets to be met by 2015 on ways to reduce the risks of disasters.

A top issue at the conference is how to set up an early warning system for tsunamis, amid outrage that Indian Ocean nations had no way of knowing about the giant waves that battered their coasts on December 26 killing more than 168,000 people.

Lagon said the United States was fully committed to helping build an early warning system.

But experts here have called for measures to reduce the risks of all disasters and cited global warming as a concern.

UN relief chief Jan Egeland in his opening address Tuesday to the five-day conference said that in addition to natural disasters, "We now face threats of our own collective making: global warming, environmental degradation and uncontrolled urbanization."

HALIFAX - Winter continued its snowy assault on the Maritimes Thursday as a blizzard made driving miserable across most roadways and knocked out electricity in some areas.

For the second time in a week, students in parts of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick had the day off as a fierce winter storm moved through the region.

Winds created whiteout conditions around many parts of N.S., while the provincial power utility reported a number of outages in the Halifax area. [...]

Heavy snow and high winds hampered road conditions across New Brunswick, where dozens of accidents have been reported. Schools were cancelled early in the morning in advance of the storm.

Six tractor trailers were involved in a collision on the Trans-Canada Highway near Hartland, about 200 km west of Fredericton. Other vehicles were involved, but no one was seriously injured, said an RCMP spokesperson.

By the time the blizzard peters out Thursday night, about 25 centimetres of snow will have fallen in most regions of the province.

MBABANE, Jan 20 (Reuters) - A torrent of water swept away a 25-seater bus as it crossed a swollen river in Swaziland and 12 people are feared dead, police said on Thursday.

"The surviving passengers said they pleaded with the driver not to attempt to cross the river. They said he locked the doors to prevent their escape," Police Superintendent Vusi Masuku told Reuters.

The driver was among 10 people missing and presumed drowned after the accident late on Tuesday near Dvokolwako, 100 km (60 miles) northeast of Mbabane, he added.

The badly bruised body of the bus conductor and that of a woman passenger had been retrieved from the flood waters by rescuers, assisted by soldiers and police divers.

The toll might have been higher but for a quick-thinking police officer travelling on the bus, who pulled several fellow passengers through a window to safety.

A huge clean-up effort is underway across NSW after violent storms lashed the north-west and Riverina regions, lifting roofs off houses and cutting electricity to more than 3,000 households.

More than 600 people contacted the State Emergency Service (SES) for assistance since the severe line of storms hit yesterday afternoon, an SES spokesman said.

Among the worst hit areas of the state was Narrabri in the north west and the Riverina district, he said.

"There was a very, very small but intense windstorm that swept through the town of Narrabri and left it without power all night.''

"My understanding is that there are some 20 homes that have been partially or completely unroofed and are completely uninhabitable.'' [...]

Wind gusts of up to 124 kmh were recorded at Yanco, in the Riverina, just before 1pm (AEDT), the Bureau of Meteorology said.

The storms dumped hail and caused widespread mayhem in the Riverina before moving east and striking the southern tablelands, Illawarra and parts of Sydney.

Strong winds flipped a seaplane over as it attempted to take off in Sydney Harbour.

The pilot of the seaplane was trying to take off from Rose Bay, in the city's east, when a strong gust of wind caused a wing to dip about 5.40pm (AEDT) yesterday.

Another gust of wind caused the wing to touch the water and the plane flipped over, police said.

The pilot and three passengers all escaped from the plane uninjured.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau was investigating the incident.

In Griffith, the TAFE college lost part of its roof and there were numerous reports of damage to farmhouses, the State Emergency Service (SES) said.

Hailstones up to 3 centimetres in diameter fell in Leeton and there was localised flooding in Captains Flat, near Canberra, weather bureau meteorologist Peter Dunda said.

The small town of Culcairn, near the Victorian border, received roughly its average monthly rainfall yesterday when storms dumped 45 millimetres in two-and-a-half hours, Mr Dunda said.

Flights out of Sydney airport were delayed by 30 minutes because baggage handlers could not go out on the tarmac when there was lightning around, Sydney Airport Corporation said.

A spokesman for the ACT Emergency Services Authority said the SES received 19 calls for help around Canberra, mainly in the southern and western suburbs.

Country Energy spokeswoman Nicole Leedham said up to 8000 customers were without power in Temora, Coolamon, Junee, Cootamundra and West Wyalong.

"We think we've had a direct lightning strike on one of the main feeders into Temora," she said.

"We're working to get the power up and running and all available crews are out."

A spokeswoman for Integral Energy said about 22,000 homes and businesses were without power in the Illawarra, southern highlands and Blue Mountains areas. [...]

About 1,500 of the natives of South America wash up, leaving experts puzzled.

More than 1,500 jumbo squid — common to South America — have washed onto Orange County beaches over the last few days, leaving marine experts perplexed as to why so many of these torpedo-shaped mollusks have traveled so far north.

"We've known that there's something peculiar going on with those species," said John McGowan, professor emeritus at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla and one of the leading oceanographers on the West Coast. [...]

The creatures are typically found off Peru and elsewhere in South America, but in recent years they have been turning up in larger numbers in the Gulf of California, Oregon and Alaska.

McGowan called the recent stranding "dramatic," but said marine experts don't know much about the squids, including why they've reached Southern California.

"These things are invading, and we don't know what's going on," he said. "It may be they're following a warm California current. Oceanographers don't have a clue why a large population of squid like this is moving north or why they strand themselves." [...]

LOS ANGELES -- A mysterious oil slick off southern California has damaged more wildlife than any in state coastal waters since 1990, officials said Thursday as they struggled to find its source.

Dead or oiled seabirds are now turning up on beaches from Santa Barbara to Huntington Beach, with estimates that as many as 5,000 birds may have been coated with the black goo. So far, nearly 1,400 birds have been retrieved since the first grebes washed ashore in Ventura County a week ago.

What makes this so perplexing is that wildlife officials are overrun by birds but have not found a major tell-tale slick on the water or tar balls washing ashore.

"It's a tough nut to crack," said Dana Michaels, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Fish and Game. "It's not like there's a big slick someplace and we can say, `That's the responsible party.' This is a real mystery." [...]

The Sun spewed forth a massive amount of radiation this week, causing brilliant auroras and a radio blackout.

Since 14 January alone, it has unleashed at least 17 medium and five large solar flares from a single sunspot cluster. Forecasters at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) expect medium to high solar activity to continue until 23 January.

"Having so many big flares from one particular region of the Sun is quite something," says Bernhard Fleck, project scientist for the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory satellite.

The X-rays produced by the flares did not rise to the level of the notorious solar storms of October and November 2003, but in terms of high-energy protons, this is the largest radiation storm since October 1989. [...]

A COUPLE were sent flying when 80mph winds plucked their mobile home from the ground, lifted it OVER another caravan and smashed it into a THIRD.

Ann and Trevor Sharples were knocked unconscious as the rented caravan was blown 120ft in the middle of the night.

The couple came round to find Trevor, 61, underneath a TV set and a cupboard — and the 30ft holiday home smashed to smithereens.

Amazingly, they escaped injury in the hurricane-force blast.

And they emerged from the wreckage to discover ANOTHER home had been thrown on to their car at the site in St Bees, Cumbria. [...]

A snowstorm moving Friday from Canada into the Great Lakes drew weather warnings from North Dakota to New Jersey and the Long Island Sound, with some areas bracing for a foot of snow or more.

The storm blanketed parts of Minnesota on Friday evening, stalling rush-hour traffic in the Twin Cities and shutting down Interstate 94 and other highways in western Minnesota because of zero visibility. Just a single runway of Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport was open by 6 p.m., and more than 200 flights were canceled.

New Jersey and areas around New York City expected up to 15 inches of snow over the weekend. Several areas to the west expected less snow, but some, such as southwestern Ohio, already had several inches on the ground from earlier storms. [...]

Bitter cold already closed schools Friday in central New York and hampered road-clearing efforts. Early morning temperatures dipped as low as minus 15 in Ithaca, and Syracuse's low of 11 below zero beat the date's previous record of 8 below, set in 1984.

"It actually hurts - I mean, breathing actually hurts," Syracuse schools spokesman Neil Driscoll told AP Radio. "It's such a drastic change to just step outside with a minus 15 degree actual temperature and a wind chill that ranges somewhere from 20 to 30 below." [...]

The coming storm was expected to bring strong wind to areas around the city along with heavy snow, prompting the National Weather Service to issue a blizzard warning along the Long Island Sound.

More than 8 inches of snow were expected to fall in Minneapolis by Saturday morning, and Milwaukee and other cities along Lake Michigan area could get close to a foot. Chicago was expecting up to 10 inches by Saturday, along with winds of around 25 mph, and as much as 8 inches of snow were expected in northern Ohio.

The snow could fall as fast as 2 inches an hour in Pennsylvania, which could get up to 10 inches. That state and New Jersey each had more than 2,000 trucks available to salt and plow major roadways, authorities said. [...]

In eastern North Dakota, where 6 inches of snow and wind gusts approaching 50 mph were expected Friday and early Saturday, blowing snow and icy roads made driving difficult.

"Everybody from every direction says the roads are terrible," Jessie Puppe, manager of a West Fargo truck stop, said Friday.

KABUL, Afghanistan, - Nazifa, six, looks dishevelled as she stands beside her father amid the puddles and snow outside the tent that is their home in the Chaman-e-Hozori section of Kabul.

Her blue eyes well up with tears as she calls out for her mother, who froze to death in December during one of the cityís first snowfalls.

Her father, Abdul Qahar, 60, tells how he brought his family of six to Kabul from the northern province of Kapisa three years ago. He said that his wife became ill when the cold weather arrived late in 2004. He said he took her to the hospital several times for treatment but he was unable to pay the doctorís bills, and she died on December 20.

Since the collapse of the Taliban regime in 2001, dozens of international relief agencies have arrived in Afghanistan to provide help to those displaced by years of war and drought. Yet the capital still faces a serious refugee problem, and this yearís especially cold winter has dramatized the scale of the hardship.

Snow is making life difficult for refugees in Kabul this winter.

About 3,000 refugee families are living either in tents or abandoned government buildings in Kabul, according to Mohammad Hafiz Nadim, spokesman for the Ministry for Refugees and Repatriation.

He said there are currently about 30 "tent towns" in Kabul. About 300 families live in the Chaman-e-Hozori camp alone. At least three people have died there so far this winter.

The largest emission of radiation by the sun in 15 years could disrupt mobile telephone communications as well as television and radio reception, scientists have said.

Large solar flares were unleashed when energy stored in magnetic fields above sunspots was suddenly released, according to the scientists at Britain's Royal Astronomical Society.

The effects of the solar flares were seen at different points on earth, including brilliant auroras over parts of Britain on Friday night.

"Flares can affect short-wave communications and satellites in the earth's orbit, which could mean problems for phones, television and radio signals," Peter Bond, spokesman for the Royal Astronomical Society, said.

"The flares have caused a huge amount of geo-magnetic activity as the magnetic field takes a while to settle," he said.

It was the largest radiation storm since October 1989, according to experts.

The Earth's magnetic field was also bombarded with extra energy from the sun on 24 October 2003 when a geomagnetic storm sent charged particles that affected electric utilities, airline communications and satellite navigation systems.

Nineteen miners have died after a flood and two gas explosions hit separate coal mines in China, the official Xinhua News Agency reported today.

A mine shaft belonging to the Yaojie Coal and Electricity Co. in the western province of Gansu flooded Friday, trapping and killing five workers, Xinhua said. In China's northeastern province of Liaoning, seven other workers died instantly Friday and two later succumbed to injuries after a gas explosion ripped through the Daming Coal Mine, Xinhua said.

Four others were injured in the accident after leaking gas was ignited as miners tried to reinforce a collapsing tunnel, it said.

A separate blast in the southern province of Yunnan on Thursday took the lives of five miners and injured four, it said.

A MAN is feared to have drowned after being swept away by flash floods in a popular canyoning area of the Blue Mountains in New South Wales.

The 32-year-old Sydney man disappeared as a wall of water surged through the narrow canyon at Empress Falls, between Springwood and Wentworth Falls, after hail and rain storms struck about 4pm yesterday.

A female member of his six-member abseiling expedition dislocated her shoulder, and police rescue and ambulance officers were still trying to carry her from the area at 8.30pm.

Blue Mountains police duty officer Acting Superintendent Mark Davis said the man had become separated from his five companions and lost his footing while trying to reach them.

"He tried to get to them. He jumped into the water and hasn't been seen since," Superintendent Davis said.

(CP) - A massive snowstorm accompanied by frigid winds pummelled a wide swath of southern Ontario on Saturday - and was on a path to wallop Atlantic Canada early Sunday.

The blizzard, the cause of at least 150 collisions on city streets and Ontario highways due to black ice and whiteouts, would be the third heavy snowfall for the East Coast in a week.

"Already we're running above average for snowfall, and this storm will push us way over," Darin Borgel, Environment Canada meteorologist, said Saturday at the storm prediction centre in Dartmouth, N.S.

Some flights at Toronto's Pearson International Airport, Canada's busiest, were delayed or cancelled because of the storm, said Connie Turner, spokeswoman for the Greater Toronto Airports Authority.

"It is Canada," Turner said, adding the airport would likely be fully operational by Sunday.

Anywhere from 15 to 30 centimetres of snow was expected to have fallen from Windsor, Ont., to Belleville, Ont. by the time the storm system passed through, Environment Canada said. Forecasters warned some cities would be knee-high in the white stuff by the end of it.

Wind chills of -30 C to -40 C were also expected from London, Ont., to Ottawa. [...]

Whiteouts were also reported in downtown Toronto, Burlington, Oakville and Hamilton.

Nova Scotia was expected to receive up to 40 centimetres of snow on Sunday, with winds gusting to 100 kilometres per hour. Parts of New Brunswick were expected to get a 20-centimetre dumping.

A cold snap already in the region was only expected to make matters worse.

"We're looking at wind chills around -35 C with the snow coming down (in New Brunswick)," Borgel said. "Being exposed to that outside, it's very dangerous if you're out for any length of time."

Newfoundland was already being lashed by a separate storm Saturday that had dropped about 16 centimetres of snow on the St. John's area by mid-day.

The latest blizzard, which originated in the U.S. Midwest and resulted in the cancellations of hundreds of flights there on Saturday, was expected to reach Newfoundland on Monday.

Storm warnings were posted from Wisconsin to New England. Authorities reported three men dead - one after falling through ice in Ohio and two others who died of apparent heart attacks while removing snow.

About 400 flights were cancelled Saturday at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and hundreds more were reported at the Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark airports in New York's metropolitan area.

Two airplanes slid off a taxiway while trying to take off Saturday morning at Pittsburgh International Airport, although no injuries were reported.

NEW YORK - Hundreds of airline flights were canceled Saturday and fleets of road plows were warmed up as a paralyzing snowstorm barreled out of the Midwest and spread across the Northeast with a potential for up to 20 inches of snow driven by 50 mph wind.

Storm warnings were posted from Wisconsin to New England, where the National Weather Service posted blizzard warnings in effect through Sunday. By afternoon, snow was falling across a region stretching from Wisconsin and Illinois to Virginia and the New England states.

One man died after falling through ice on a pond in Ohio, where two others died of apparent heart attacks while removing snow, authorities said.

Temperatures in Maine fell to 36 below zero at Masardis, and Bangor dropped to a record low of 29 below. Meteorologists predicted wind up to 50 mph would push wind chill readings to 8 below zero in New York and New Jersey. [...]

Up to a foot of snow had fallen in Wisconsin and Michigan, and wind gusted to more than 60 mph across Iowa. As much as 18 inches of snow was forecast in northern New Jersey and accumulations of up to 20 inches were possible in parts of New England and the New York City area, the weather service said. A foot was likely in northern sections of Ohio and Pennsylvania.

While crews in the Midwest labored to remove what already had fallen, highway departments in the Northeast readied hundreds of plows and salt-spreading trucks. New York City canceled all vacations for its sanitation workers and called people in on their days off to handle the snow. Kennedy International Airport had machines capable of melting 500 tons of snow an hour. [...]

The blowing snow caused frustrating delays as airlines called off flights.

About 400 flights were canceled Saturday at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and dozens more were called off at the city's Midway Airport. More than 200 people stayed the night at the two airports because of flights canceled the night before.

Even more chain-reaction cancellations were expected at Chicago and elsewhere as the storm clamped down on airports on the East Coast, said Chicago Department of Aviation spokeswoman Annette Martinez.

The New York metropolitan area's Kennedy and Newark airports had dozens of cancellations as the storm arrived Saturday afternoon, said Port Authority spokesman Alan Hicks. LaGuardia had nearly 200 cancellations by 2 p.m.

By noon at Philadelphia International Airport, the storm had already wiped out about 25 percent of the normal load of 1,100 daily arrivals and departures. A private jet and a commuter plane slid off a taxiway at Pittsburgh International Airport; no one was injured.

On the highways, Pennsylvania State Police reported dozens of accidents, including one involving 11 cars. New Jersey banned tractor-trailer rigs and motorcycles from the New Jersey Turnpike and slashed the speed limit to 45 mph. [...]

VIENNA - An ice storm in Austria left three dead on a highway in the south on Friday when a motorist lost control of his car, police said.

Police said falling rain immediately froze leading to a series of accidents, in which two women and a Polish man were killed near the town of Kaiserwald when their car flipped over.

In western Austria, the highway leading to a tunnel in the Brenner pass linking Italy and Austria was closed due to accidents caused by winds of over 120 kilometres (75 miles) an hour.

In Kitzbuehel, a World Cup Super-G ski race was postponed until Monday due to difficult conditions from rain, snow and high winds.

Officials, meanwhile, put out avalanche warnings for the Austrian Alps.

NEW YORK - The northeastern United States was emerging from a snowstorm, ranked among the five worst in the past century, that was linked to at least 18 deaths across eight states.

The storm, which started in the midwest Friday, dumped 30 centimeters (a foot) of snow in Detroit, 35 centimeters (14 inches) in New York City, and close to a meter (more than three feet) in some parts of the state of Massachusetts.

At least 18 deaths in eight states were linked to the storm, including that of a ten-year-old girl struck by a snowplow as she played on a snowbank in New York, media reports said.

Five people collapsed while shoveling snow in New York, and one in Boston, apparently having suffered heart attacks, according to reports in The Washington Post and the New York Times.

Storm-related deaths were also reported in Ohio, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Iowa.

The governors of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Jersey declared emergencies in their states, warning people to stay home to facilitate road clearance on Monday. Boston area schools were to be closed until Wednesday.

Boston's Logan International Airport remained closed early Monday. Thousands of flights were delayed or cancelled at airports in northeastern and midwestern US states as residents dug out from the first major snowstorm of the year.

"The blizzard of 2005 will go down in history as one of the five top snowstorms for eastern New England," said James Wilson, a meteorologist with The Weather Channel.

At one point Sunday, 20 centimeters (eight inches) of snow fell in 75 minutes in Chatham, Massachusetts, the channel said.

Authorities were warning of brutal cold Monday up and down the east coast from the Great Lakes region down to Florida, with high winds sending temperatures well below zero degrees Fahrenheit (minus 18 Celsius) in many areas.

Airlines were still dealing with the fallout of thousands of flight delays and cancellations over the weekend in Chicago, New York, Boston and smaller cities. [...]

British airports canceled 31 flights to and from the United States' northeast region, officials said in London on Sunday. London's main Heathrow airport canceled 29 arrivals and departures after heavy snowfall in New York, Boston and Philadelphia.

US authorities begged people to stay off the roads as high winds blowing snow produced whiteout conditions from New York to Maine, bringing normally congested cities to a standstill.

"Any travel is strongly discouraged," the National Weather Service warned Massachusetts residents early Sunday. "If you leave the safety of being indoors, you are putting your life at risk." [...]

Commuters have been warned to stay off the roads in north Queensland as the region battles widespread heavy downpours and flooding, which have already claimed two lives.

Two people were killed and three injured after a collision in wet conditions between two cars and a semi-trailer on the Bruce Highway at Yalarbo, north of Mackay, about 1.40pm (AEST) yesterday.

Elsewhere, a truck driver had to be rescued from the roof of his vehicle after becoming stuck in rising waters.

Several roads between Townsville and Mackay were closed, with the region experiencing up to 120 millimetres of rain in the eight hours to 5pm (AEST) yesterday.

A Townsville police spokesman said most roads in the region were closed and warned people not to travel unless absolutely essential. [...]

A powerful electrical storm lashed Sydney and central western NSW yesterday, setting a house on fire and leaving about 35,000 households without power.

In the Baulkham Hills suburb of Bella Vista, a lightning strike about 8am set a house on fire. Superintendent Ian Krimmer, of the NSW Fire Brigade, said the fire, in the roof of the two-storey house, was quickly brought under control.

In Hornsby and Castle Hill, unit residents had to be rescued from lifts affected by the power fluctuations. Power lines also came down at Penrith, Emu Plains and Blacktown.

In Coonabarabran, wind gusts of 119kmh were recorded, the highest in the state.

The Bureau of Meteorology's severe weather forecaster, James Taylor, said that in some areas of the western suburbs and the Blue Mountains, rainfalls were the heaviest in a decade or so. Willmot, near Penrith, received 45 millimetres of rain in an hour and Woodford, near Katoomba, received 42millimetres in just half an hour.

The heavy rain forced the suspension of a search for a canyoner swept away by rising waters in the Blue Mountains late the previous afternoon. The 32-year-old Sydney man became separated from a group he was canyoning with at Empress Falls, with heavy fog thwarting rescuers' initial search efforts.

Mr Taylor said big thunderstorms were common at this time of year. "The severe thunderstorm season is generally from about September through to the end of March," he said. [...]

TORONTO (CP) - A broken water main caused a power outage in the city's downtown core on Sunday, prompting the closure of stores and tourist attractions and leaving some residents without power for nearly 12 hours.

The City of Toronto opened Metro Hall for condo and apartment-dwellers left without heat as temperatures outside hovered well below freezing. Personnel from the Red Cross were on site.

Fire crews said they hoped to have power restored by 7 p.m., but added that frozen pipes could complicate repair efforts.

They were called to a water main leak at a downtown hydro power station at about 7 a.m. Sunday. Hydro crews shut off power before 9 a.m. after the water main caused flooding at the facility.

"We don't know the extent of the damage (of the leak)," Hydro One spokesman Alan Manchee told a news conference.

The ramifications of the outage would have been worse had it happened on a weekday, Manchee said, as it struck much of Toronto's financial district.

"I'm not sure you could say any time is a good time for an incident like this," he said. "(But) it's good that it happened today rather than a weekday."

Ryerson University and the Toronto Eaton Centre were shut down for the day and both were set to reopen Monday.

Manchee said crews would restore the power incrementally to avoid overloading the power system.

A FLOOD flood in Guyana has left five people dead as relief supplies trickle into thousands of affected villages in the South American nation.

The bodies of two men and a woman were found in three Atlantic coast villages severely affected by the week-old flood, police spokesman John Sauers said, raising the death toll from two to five.

President Bharrat Jagdeo said at least 2000 people were in 23 emergency shelters.

Food and dry rations were being delivered to affected communities where the now stagnant and polluted water was between 1.5 and 2.1 metres deep, Mr Jagdeo said.

More than three million Muslims - among them South Africans - on pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia are stranded in the desert following heavy rains on Sunday, SABC radio news reported.

South African Consulate-General Mohammed Dangor, who was in Jeddah said the pilgrims were stranded in a camp 40 kilometres outside Mecca.

Dangor said Mecca and Jeddah have recorded an above average rainfall this season. Last year, a stampede left scores of people dead.

Dangor has urged families and relatives of those who went on the pilgrimage not to panic as the situation was under control, SABC reported.

Dead are among 13-member family crammed into one vehicle which has tried to cross flooded valley.

RIYADH - Eight people were killed after being washed away by flood waters near the western city of Medina during the worst torrential storm to hit Saudi Arabia in 20 years, newspapers reported Monday.

The dead were among a 13-member family crammed into one vehicle which had tried to cross a flooded valley, Al-Watan newspaper said.

The vehicle was swept away and bodies found some 10 kilometres (six miles) away, the daily said, adding that one passenger was rescued while four others are still missing.

The English-language Arab News said many residents of Medina were forced to leave their homes after they were flooded while a dam outside the city collapsed, isolating villages where fire brigades rescued 43 stranded people. [...]

The global warming danger threshold for the world is clearly marked for the first time in an international report to be published tomorrow - and the bad news is, the world has nearly reached it already.

The countdown to climate-change catastrophe is spelt out by a task force of senior politicians, business leaders and academics from around the world - and it is remarkably brief. In as little as 10 years, or even less, their report indicates, the point of no return with global warming may have been reached.

The report, Meeting The Climate Challenge, is aimed at policymakers in every country, from national leaders down. It has been timed to coincide with Tony Blair's promised efforts to advance climate change policy in 2005 as chairman of both the G8 group of rich countries and the European Union.

And it breaks new ground by putting a figure - for the first time in such a high-level document - on the danger point of global warming, that is, the temperature rise beyond which the world would be irretrievably committed to disastrous changes. These could include widespread agricultural failure, water shortages and major droughts, increased disease, sea-level rise and the death of forests - with the added possibility of abrupt catastrophic events such as "runaway" global warming, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, or the switching-off of the Gulf Stream.

The report says this point will be two degrees centigrade above the average world temperature prevailing in 1750 before the industrial revolution, when human activities - mainly the production of waste gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2), which retain the sun's heat in the atmosphere - first started to affect the climate. But it points out that global average temperature has already risen by 0.8 degrees since then, with more rises already in the pipeline - so the world has little more than a single degree of temperature latitude before the crucial point is reached.

More ominously still, it assesses the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere after which the two-degree rise will become inevitable, and says it will be 400 parts per million by volume (ppm) of CO2.

The current level is 379ppm, and rising by more than 2ppm annually - so it is likely that the vital 400ppm threshold will be crossed in just 10 years' time, or even less (although the two-degree temperature rise might take longer to come into effect).

"There is an ecological timebomb ticking away," said Stephen Byers, the former transport secretary, who co-chaired the task force that produced the report with the US Republican senator Olympia Snowe. It was assembled by the Institute for Public Policy Research in the UK, the Centre for American Progress in the US, and The Australia Institute.The group's chief scientific adviser is Dr Rakendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. [...]

Global warning has already hit the danger point that international attempts to curb it are designed to avoid, according to the world's top climate watchdog.

Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told an international conference attended by 114 governments in Mauritius this month that he personally believes that the world has "already reached the level of dangerous concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere" and called for immediate and "very deep" cuts in the pollution if humanity is to "survive".

His comments rocked the Bush administration - which immediately tried to slap him down - not least because it put him in his post after Exxon, the major oil company most opposed to international action on global warming, complained that his predecessor was too "aggressive" on the issue.

A memorandum from Exxon to the White House in early 2001 specifically asked it to get the previous chairman, Dr Robert Watson, the chief scientist of the World Bank, "replaced at the request of the US". The Bush administration then lobbied other countries in favour of Dr Pachauri - whom the former vice-president Al Gore called the "let's drag our feet" candidate, and got him elected to replace Dr Watson, a British-born naturalised American, who had repeatedly called for urgent action.

But this month, at a conference of Small Island Developing States on the Indian Ocean island, the new chairman, a former head of India's Tata Energy Research Institute, himself issued what top United Nations officials described as a "very courageous" challenge.

He told delegates: "Climate change is for real. We have just a small window of opportunity and it is closing rather rapidly. There is not a moment to lose."

Afterwards he told The Independent on Sunday that widespread dying of coral reefs, and rapid melting of ice in the Arctic, had driven him to the conclusion that the danger point the IPCC had been set up to avoid had already been reached.

Reefs throughout the world are perishing as the seas warm up: as water temperatures rise, they lose their colours and turn a ghostly white. Partly as a result, up to a quarter of the world's corals have been destroyed.

And in November, a multi-year study by 300 scientists concluded that the Arctic was warming twice as fast as the rest of the world and that its ice-cap had shrunk by up to 20 per cent in the past three decades.

The ice is also 40 per cent thinner than it was in the 1970s and is expected to disappear altogether by 2070. And while Dr Pachauri was speaking parts of the Arctic were having a January "heatwave", with temperatures eight to nine degrees centigrade higher than normal.

He also cited alarming measurements, first reported in The Independent on Sunday, showing that levels of carbon dioxide (the main cause of global warming) have leapt abruptly over the past two years, suggesting that climate change may be accelerating out of control.

He added that, because of inertia built into the Earth's natural systems, the world was now only experiencing the result of pollution emitted in the 1960s, and much greater effects would occur as the increased pollution of later decades worked its way through. He concluded: "We are risking the ability of the human race to survive."

A cold snap gripped much of western Europe on Monday with temperatures dipping below zero and snow and ice affecting traffic in many areas.

Traffic around Germany was held up in several regions as snow blocked roads and ice made driving difficult, police said, with some 70 weather-related traffic jams across the country.

In the northwestern North Rhine-Westphalia region, Germany's most populated, police said there more than 760 accidents from Sunday afternoon thru Monday morning.

Icy conditions in southern Germany near the border with Austria between Passau and Ratisbonne caused a massive pile-up of at least 15 trucks and 20 cars, injuring 18 people.

At least 25 accidents were reported on the main highway near Delmenhorst, northern Germany, due to icy roads, leaving one person seriously injured and many people hurt. The road was temporarily closed.

In Saxony state, in the southeast, the driver of a truck transporting wooden planks lost control of his vehicle near Chemnitz. It hit a car and overturned on the road, blocking both lanes for several hours. The driver, 33, escaped with minor head injuries.

In Britain, motorists were being warned of potentially hazardous road conditions on Monday, with snowfalls expected to hit eastern parts of the country.

Up to five centimetres (around two inches) of snow, as well as hail and sleet, was expected to fall on eastern Scotland and eastern parts of England, ranging from the far south to Northumberland in the north.

There was even a small chance of some snow in London, which in recent years has rarely seen snowfalls.

Temperatures also dipped in France, prompting the government to declare an alert calling for more space in homeless shelters.

Snow was reported in the northwest of the country, and local authorities in Normandy called on residents to limit their travel and to signal any homeless people left out in the cold.

The Meteo France weather service said to expect frigid temperatures of minus five and minus seven degrees Celsius (23 and 19 Fahrenheit) in the coming days in the eastern part of the country.

Portugal, Spain and Belgium were also affected by the cold snap.

This week should be the coldest this year in Portugal, the weather service said, while in Spain, where temperatures were expected to dip to minus 15 Celsius in the center of the country, the government urged motorists to try and stay off the roads.

In the Netherlands, a slight snowfall overnight and freezing temperatures led to what was described Monday morning as "historic" traffic jams equivalent to 560 kilometers (350 miles), or the distance between Amsterdam and Paris.

In Turkey heavy snowfall in almost all parts of the country since Saturday cut off hundreds of villages and disrupted traffic nationwide on roads which were overcrowded by motorists returning home after the four-day Eid al-Adha holiday.

In the central city of Kayseri, a 65-year-old man died Monday after he fell and hit his head on the iced ground while cleaning snow in his garden.

Heavy snowfall in Italy's central Abbruzi mountains forced the closure of schools near L'Aquila.

Blizzards in Albania kept most of the roads closed in the north and the south of the country.

Eight people were killed in a traffic accident near the northern town of Qafa e Buallit during a heavy blizzard on Sunday, police said.

But Swedes, who two weeks ago were battered by strong winds, found themselves enjoying unseasonably warm temperatures and an unusual lack of snow.

"If this continues into February, this will be one of the warmest winters in a long time," Hans Alexandersson, a climate specialist at Sweden's national meteorology institute, told AFP.

Unseasonably warm temperatures in Finland, around freezing instead of the usual minus 15 to minus 10 degrees, have allowed high-speed ferries to continue operating in the Gulf of Finland.

Newfoundlanders were preparing for another winter wallop as Nova Scotia was battered yesterday by the third blizzard in a week, part of record-breaking weather that left most of the East shivering and shovelling while much of the West was either warm or wet.

Nova Scotia, along with parts of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, was pounded yesterday by a raging nor'easter that cancelled most flights and brought up to 60 centimetres of snow and wind gusts of up to 100 kilometres an hour.

"It's almost whiteout conditions right here. The snow's blowing pretty hard and there's lots of snow on the ground," said David Leblanc, a cashier at Wilson's Gas Stop in Halifax.

"A lot of people are coming in complaining about it, wishing it would stop, but there's really not much we can do about it."

The weather, which was so fierce some snowplows were taken off the road, slowed efforts to tow a fishing vessel that suffered mechanical failure about 250 kilometres southeast of Cape Breton on Friday. The ship was expected to reach port last night, said Ray McFadgen of the coast guard.

The storm is expected to intensify and pummel Newfoundland today, adding to the effects of a separate weather system that rocked the province on Saturday, blanketing St. John's with 60.1 cm of snow, which broke the all-time winter record of 54.9 cm set in 1959.

"When it hits the Atlantic Ocean, it's picking up some moisture and it's getting worse," Environment Canada forecaster Michel de Grosbois said.

Hearty Newfoundlanders flocked to stores yesterday to replenish supplies, snapping up all the snow blowers at an "extremely busy" Canadian Tire in St. John's.

"They're being prepared for the coming storm," harried clerk Lesley Saunders said.

The fierce storm that thumped Nova Scotia yesterday is the same one that hit Southern Ontario on Saturday with up to 15 cm of snow in Toronto and wind chills around ó30 and snarled roads and air travel. The system, which originated in the U.S. Midwest, also struck the U.S. Northeast yesterday, dumping up to 75 cm of snow on Boston.

The Ontario Provincial Police received reports of more than 800 accidents Saturday, most of which were in the Greater Toronto Area and the Niagara Region. There were no serious injuries.

"People [drive] too fast and they don't take into consideration what the weather and road conditions are like, and they just seem to want to speed, so they wind up in the ditch," Sergeant Joe Bosi said.

At Pearson International Airport in Toronto, the storm affected nearly every flight Saturday, causing delays and cancellations, leaving airlines scrambling to catch up yesterday. Their efforts were slowed by an unrelated glitch in the computerized baggage system, said Connie Turner, spokeswoman for the Greater Toronto Airports Authority.

Toronto Fire Services Captain Michael Strapko said it appears yesterday's slightly warmer temperatures caused a water main to flood a hydro electrical station in downtown Toronto, closing stores and tourist attractions and leaving residents without electricity and phone service for an estimated 12 hours. Alberta, on the other hand, was basking in spring-like weather. Calgary hit 14 yesterday, as residents donned shorts and went jogging and cycling.

"I'm doing a lesson right now with a guy with his shorts on, but it's not golfable," said Kent Racz, a golf pro at the Calgary Golf and Country Club. "It's beautiful, though." It was so balmy on Saturday evening, Mr. Racz said, he smoked a cigar in his short sleeves at 10 p.m. on his deck.

On the wet West Coast, British Columbians contended with yet another day of rain as officials extended an evacuation order to 10 North Vancouver families whose homes are under threat from mudslides.

Saturday's 39.4 millimetres of rainfall broke the previous Jan. 22 record of 35.8 mm in 1959.

"They're tired of it. . . . People are itchy to get gardening, to get spring happening," said Greg Vaughan, nursery manager at Garden Works in Vancouver.

"It's depressing. It took me three hours to get home from work the other night, too, because the road was closed because it was flooded. It usually takes an hour."

BIRCH ISLAND, B.C. - About 100 people have been ordered to leave their homes in the community of Birch Island, B.C., because of the threat of flooding.

The North Thompson River flows through the community, about 100 kilometres north of Kamloops, and is jammed with ice and swelling. A bridge has already been damaged.

About 20 homes have been evacuated and 11 houses have been flooded. Emergency officials say the situation could get much worse over the next 24 hours. [...]

CALGARY - Two Calgary skiers were killed and a third seriously injured when an avalanche roared down an Austrian mountainside over the weekend.

The massive slide ñ about 300 metres wide ñ claimed the lives of five people in total, including a third Canadian.

Linda Putnam, 40, and Hugh Hincks, 57, died in the avalanche.

Helen Hincks, 53, is listed in critical condition in hospital. Putnam's husband Todd Gardiner was briefly knocked out by the slide, but was able to try to rescue his wife and friends.

The slide hit at a resort in the Alps, near Innsbruck. The area had been hit with heavy snow, strong winds and mild temperatures in the days before, prompting an escalation of the avalanche alert system.

Austrian officials said the skiers and snowboarders caught in the slide were out of bounds, but a relative of Gardiner's told the Calgary Herald that he had assured them the two couples were in-bounds and had hired a guide.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - Flash floods have killed 29 people in the area of the holy city of Medina, the local governor has reported.

But the floods, which follow two days of heavy rains, have not affected the thousands of pilgrims that came to the city after completing the annual hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca and Mina, said the governor, Prince Moqrin bin Abdul Aziz, on Monday.

Pilgrims often stop at Medina, Islam's second-most sacred city, to visit Prophet Muhammad's mosque and tomb, before heading home.

The newspaper Arab News has reported that more than 400 buses of pilgrims left Mecca for Medina after the hajj, which ended on the weekend.

Prince Moqrin said most of the 29 people killed by the floods had underestimated the danger of walking or driving down Medina's valleys after heavy rains.

More than 20 cars were swept away by the floods.

CHAMBERY, France - At least four skiers died Tuesday in avalanches in the French Alps as hopes faded for a Canadian couple missing since Sunday while snowboarding in Switzerland, emergency services said.

French authorities said four avalanches were triggered in the Alpine locations Val Thorens, La Plagne, Les Arcs and Val d'Isere, killing three, including a woman, and injuring a fourth who later died.

One snowboarder skiing off-piste was buried when a slope collapsed under him.

A Swedish man was among the dead, officials in Stockholm said, adding that he died in Val Throens.

Authorities issued a warning of increased avalanche danger following recent heavy snowfall, as a cold snap gripped much of western Europe with temperatures dipping below zero and snow and ice affecting traffic in many areas. [...]

BEIJING : China plans to send a scientific team to Mount Everest this year to remeasure the height of its peak and track the impact of global warming, state media said on Tuesday.

The team, jointly organised by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping (SBSM), will work on the world's highest mountain from March 20 to June 20, China Central Television reported.

It will be China's fourth such expedition following others in 1959, 1966 and 1975.

This time, the scientists will focus on the damage caused to the area by global warming over the past 30 years, CCTV said.

Mount Everest, which straddles the border of Nepal and Chinese-controlled Tibet, is believed to have shrunk by as much as 1.3 metres due to global warming and the melting of glaciers, it said.

The mountain's official height is currently 8,848 metres.

Chinese state media last year reported that a staggering seven percent of the country's glaciers are vanishing annually under the sweltering sun, including those covering Everest.

Leading glacier expert Yan Tandong said that as many as 64 percent of China's glaciers may be gone by 2050 if current trends continue.

OVER THE ABBOTT ICE SHELF, Antarctica - From an airplane at 500 feet, all that is visible here is a vast white emptiness. Ahead, a chalky plain stretches as far as the eye can see, the monotony broken only by a few gentle rises and the wrinkles created when new sheets of ice form.

Under the surface of that ice, though, profound and potentially troubling changes are taking place, and at a quickened pace. With temperatures climbing in parts of Antarctica in recent years, melt water seems to be penetrating deeper and deeper into ice crevices, weakening immense and seemingly impregnable formations that have developed over thousands of years.

As a result, huge glaciers in this and other remote areas of Antarctica are thinning and ice shelves the size of American states are either disintegrating or retreating - all possible indications of global warming. Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey reported in December that in some parts of the Antarctic Peninsula hundreds of miles from here, large growths of grass are appearing in places that until recently were hidden under a frozen cloak.

"The evidence is piling up; everything fits," Dr. Robert Thomas, a glaciologist from NASA who is the lead author of a recent paper on accelerating sea-level rise, said as the Chilean Navy plane flew over the sea ice here on an unusually clear day late in November. "Around the Amundsen Sea, we have surveyed a half dozen glaciers. All are thinning, in some cases quite rapidly, and in each case, the ice shelf is also thinning." [...]

For most parts of Antarctica, reliable records go back less than 50 years, and data from satellites and overflights like the ones going on here have been collected over only the past decade or so. But that research, plus striking changes that are visible to the naked eye, all point toward the disturbance of climate patterns thought to have been in place for thousands of years.

KAMLOOPS, B.C. (CP) - Some 500 people packed bags and nervously watched the Barriere River swirl threateningly outside their windows Tuesday night.

They have been put on an evacuation alert and were told to be ready to flee should the river spill over the banks toward the communities of Little Fort and Barriere, north of Kamloops. The Barriere River is jammed with ice and the currents are barely able to flow through, said Barb Jackson, a spokeswoman with the Thompson-Nicola Regional District. "Search and Rescue teams are monitoring the icepack. Should it move, an evacuation order will be called," she said.

Meanwhile, 100 people remained out of their homes because of ice-caused flooding in the tiny community of Birch Island near Clearwater. [...]

Antananarivo - At least three people were killed and 83 reported missing after a strong tropical storm, Cyclone Ernest, hit Madagascar over the weekend, Malagasy officials said on Thursday.

Two fishermen off the Indian Ocean island's southern Tsihombe region and a child in the southwest district of Tulear were killed as a result of the storm, they said.

"There were a lot of fishermen at sea whose boats probably capsized," said Doly Rajaonarivelo, chief of the Androy district which includes Tsihombe.

"Villagers have already fished out two bodies and 83 people are reported missing," he said by telephone, adding that the death toll could rise as more details of the cyclone's damage become available. [...]

ALGIERS - Heavy snowfall and freezing temperatures hit north Africa Thursday, as a cold snap that has paralyzed large parts of northern Algeria and killed 13 people spread to the highlands of Morocco and Tunisia.

Snow fell in the capital Algiers, a rarity, causing serious traffic jams, and again in several towns and cities along or near the coast, among them Constantine, Tizi Ouzou and Skikda, sending residents scurrying for shelter.

The winter storms closed many roads to traffic, and a number of regions were completely cut off from the outside with snow levels rising to more than one meter (some three and a half feet).

Wind speeds reached up to 70 kilometers per hour (45 miles per hour), making the wind chill effect that much more noticeable on the third day of winter weather.

Horrible driving conditions saw the accident rate jump, with the civil protection service announcing Thursday that 13 people had died and 47 were injured in crashes in a 24-hour period.

An estimated 1,000 travelers were reported stranded by snow in various regions, and had to spend the night in schools and other public buildings.

Some flights out of Algiers' main airport and other cities were delayed, officials said.

"I've never seen so much snow fall for so long in Algiers," a local resident in his 50s said.

In some more mountainous parts of Tunisia, where temperatures also dropped sharply, local farmers said they had not seen so much snow fall in a half a century.

While the sun was shining in Tunis it remained very cold, with some papers labeling the weather "Siberian." Near the Algerian border in the northwest heavy snow fell overnight, as it did in the coastal town of Tabarka.

In Morocco meteorologists forecast heavy snow for Thursday and Friday in the northern plateaus and the Atlas mountain range in the south, warning that temperatures would drop significantly.

Around 70 of the workers did not deliver mail to homes and businesses, and only six of the 64 rounds were carried out, the state-run La Poste said, adding that it considered the stoppage "illegal".

The postmen and women had demanded more money and the replacement of scooters with cars so they could carry out their job safely and more comfortably after days of snowfall.

BOSTON - More than 5 more inches of snow fell on Boston by this morning, putting a fresh coat on the leavings of last weekend's blizzard and making January the city's snowiest on record.

Schools canceled classes yet again, and Gov. Mitt Romney asked President Bush to declare a federal emergency in the eastern half of the state, which would make the area eligible for extra aid.

The 5.4 inches of new snow recorded at Logan Airport before the storm let up this morning came only days after the blizzard that dumped more than 3 feet of snow.

It brought the airport's January total to 43.1 inches of snow, more than in any month since the National Weather Service began keeping records for the city in 1892. The previous record of 41.6 inches was set in February 2003. [...]

GENEVA - Switzerland shivered in the coldest day this winter on Thursday with icy temperatures hitting minus 19 degrees Celsius (66 degrees Fahrenheit) in the western town of Aigle, the weather centre said.

Pushed lower by a vicious wind, the thermometer sank to minus 9.5 degrees Celsius in Zurich, minus 7.5 degrees in Neuchatel and minus 5.8 degrees in Geneva, according to MeteoSuisse.

Temperatures everywhere froze below zero with the exception of the Italian-speaking region of Tessin to the south of the Alps where the mercury clung to plus-seven degrees Celsius.

LISBON - Dozens of trucks were blocked Thursday by heavy snow along the Portuguese-Spanish border as a cold snap engulfed much of Europe.

The trucks that were stranded were heading to northern Spain or central Europe, said Antonio Almeida, head of the Portuguese gendarmerie.

He said Portuguese authorities were only allowing through trucks travelling to Salamanca, Madrid or southern Spain.

A weather service official said the freezing temperatures recorded this week only occur once every 10 years.

The southeast Portuguese town of Sagres even set a record on Thursday with temperatures there dipping to 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit).

Researchers from some of Britain's leading universities used computer modelling to predict that under the "worst-case" scenario, London would be under water and winters banished to history as average temperatures in the UK soar up to 20C higher than at present.

Globally, average temperatures could reach 11C greater than today, double the rise predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the international body set up to investigate global warming. Such high temperatures would melt most of the polar icecaps and mountain glaciers, raising sea levels by more than 20ft. A report this week in The Independent predicted a 2C temperature rise would lead to irreversible changes in the climate.

The new study, in the journal Nature, was done using the spare computing time of 95,000 people from 150 countries who downloaded from the internet the global climate model of the Met Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research. The program, run as a screensaver, simulated what would happen if carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were double those of the 18th century, before the Industrial Revolution, the situation predicted by the middle of this century.

David Stainforth of Oxford University, the chief scientist of the latest study, said processing the results showed the Earth's climate is far more sensitive to increases in man-made greenhouse gases than previously realised. The findings indicate a doubling of carbon dioxide from the pre-industrial level of 280 parts per million would increase global average temperatures by between 2C and 11C.

Mr Stainforth said: "An 11C-warmed world would be a dramatically different world... There would be large areas at higher latitudes that could be up to 20C warmer than today. The UK would be at the high end of these changes. It is possible that even present levels of greenhouse gases maintained for long periods may lead to dangerous climate change... When you start to look at these temperatures, I get very worried indeed."

Attempts to control global warming, based on the Kyoto treaty, concentrated on stabilising the emissions of greenhouse gases at 1990 levels, but the scientists warned that this might not be enough. Mr Stainforth added: "We need to accept that while greenhouse gas levels can increase we need to limit them, level them off then bring them back down again."

Professor Bob Spicer, of the Open University, said average global temperature rises of 11C are unprecedented in the long geological record of the Earth. "If we go back to the Cretaceous, which is 100 million years ago, the best estimates of the global mean temperature was about 6C higher than present," Professor Spicer said. "So 11C is quite substantial and if this is right we would be going into a realm that we really don't have much evidence for even in the rock [geological] record."

Myles Allen, of Oxford University, said: "The danger zone is not something we're going to reach in the middle of the century; we're in it now." Each of the hottest 15 years on record have been since 1980.

ST. JOHN'S  —  Many schools on the Avalon Peninsula and in eastern and cental Newfoundland are closed Friday morning because of bad weather.

Heavy rain overnight is causing flooding in the St. John's area, with the fire department being called to rescue some drivers whose cars stalled in pools of water. Much of the island was pelted Thursday afternoon and night with snow, with as much as 45 centimetres of snow expected in central areas.

On the Avalon Peninsula, snow changed to rain Thursday evening, with Environment Canada reporting 41 millimetres overnight, on top of 25 centimetres of snow.

In the Gander area, more than 40 centimetres fell in a 24-hour period. That brings to more than 140 centimetres the snow fall since Saturday.

Four storms have blown through the province in six days, causing a cascade of school, office and road closures

Hundreds of motorists were stranded by heavy snow and ice on a motorway in southern Italy overnight forcing local authorities to call in the army to remove snowbound vehicles and take their occupants to safety, police said Friday.

Local authorities faced a barrage of criticism from many motorists who spent two days and nights in their vehicles on the snowbound A3 autostrada between Salerno and Reggio Calabria without receiving help.

Some 200 soldiers were drafted in to dig stranded vehicles out from thick snow and take their occupants to safety along a 160-kilometre (100-mile) section of the motorway.

Many had spent two days and nights trapped without food and water. Hospitals in the region were treating 11 people for exposure, Italian media reports said.

Local hotels and schools in the Vallo Di Diano area of Campania have been turned into reception centres for stranded drivers, and local authorities provided blankets, hot meals and bottles of water for motorists recovering from their ordeal.

But many others said they had been ignored by the thinly spread emergency services.

"We spent 48 hours on the Salerno-Reggio Calabria motorway without anyone, and I mean anyone, offering us the slightest help. We spent two night in the cold, in the car, eating what we had with us and drinking snow," said Luigi Ruggiero, deputy mayor of the small town of Ciro Marina.

He and his driver had been stranded on the A3 autostrada from 10:00 am (0900 GMT) on Wednesday until 7:00 am Friday.

"In 48 hours we got no help, not from the traffic police, the civil protection, the fire services, nobody."

As the cold snap continued, two early morning regional flights from Naples airport were cancelled due to ice on the wings of the aircraft.

Around 150 articulated trucks remained blocked on a national roadway beteween the southern regions of Basilicata and Campania early Friday, police said.

With tiny flecks of frozen rain gathering on overcoats, the season's first ice storm crept into metro Atlanta Friday afternoon.

Forecasters predict the worst is to come.

Overnight, the light sleet is expected to develop into a full-blown winter storm that could glaze roads in sheets of ice and down power lines. Rain moving up from the Gulf of Mexico colliding with cold air from the Arctic is expected to produce freezing rains beginning Friday evening and lasting through Saturday.

The mercury has dropped steadily today at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, falling from the low 40s just after midnight to 33 by 9 a.m. Overnight lows are predicted in the high 20s.

Temperatures are already below freezing in Lawrenceville and Gainesville as cold air sweeps in from the northeast.

Friday evening and Saturday events were being canceled around the metro area as people prepared for the worse, while others decided to wait and see. [...]

The conditions are being driven by unusual weather in the high atmosphere above the Arctic, says the European Ozone Research Coordinating Unit.

The stratosphere, where the ozone layer lies, has seen its coldest winter for 50 years; there have also been an unusually large number of clouds.

These factors hasten the rate at which man-made chemicals destroy ozone.

"The meteorological conditions we are now witnessing resemble and even surpass the conditions of the 1999-2000 winter, when the worst ozone loss to date was observed," said Dr Neil Harris, from the Cambridge University-based unit.

Broken balance

Ozone is a molecule that is composed of three oxygen atoms. It is responsible for filtering out harmful ultra-violet radiation (less than 290 nanometres) from the Sun.

The molecule is constantly being made and destroyed in the stratosphere, which exists from about 10km to 40km above the Earth.

In an unpolluted atmosphere, this cycle of production and decomposition is in equilibrium.

But a number of human-produced chemicals, such as the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) used as refrigerants, in aerosol sprays, as solvents and in foam-blowing agents, have risen into the stratosphere where they are broken down by the Sun's rays.

Chlorine atoms released from these chemicals then act as catalysts to decompose ozone.

Long return

At the moment, the area where the ozone layer is particularly thin is constrained by winds, which to some extent isolate the Arctic from the rest of the global climate system.

Scientists say this natural barrier will break down in the coming weeks, and the low ozone area will spread southwards over northern Europe, including the UK.

This will mean more of the Sun's ultra-violet rays reaching ground level, potentially increasing the risk of skin cancer.

The incidence of malignant melanoma, the worst kind of skin cancer, is rising; but to what extent that has been caused by decades of ozone depletion is far from clear.

"We will watch the development closely from day to day, and will inform the public and our authorities if the situation becomes worrying," said Dr Harris

The use of ozone-depleting chemicals is now restricted by an international treaty, the Montreal Protocol; but it may be half a century before levels of these chemicals have fallen sufficiently in the atmosphere to allow the northern ozone layer to be fully repaired.

YUZHNO-SAKHALINSK, - A cyclone with frosty winds and a snowstorm came from the Sea of Japan to Sakhalin on Saturday.

A storm warning is issued for all the appropriate services.

Meteorologists say the wind speed will reach 19-24 metres a second for two days and the height of waves will be five metres in the Tatar Strait.

The situation is expected to be particularly tense in the north of Sakhalin, where the temperature was 43 degrees Centigrade below zero overnight.

The cyclone shows its power in the south as well. The snowstorm is raging in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.

Such weather conditions will remain in the region till January 31, and it will become a bit warmer on the island when the cyclone goes away to the Sea of Okhotsk.

ATLANTA - Freezing rain and sleet coated parts of the Southeast with a layer of ice Saturday, canceling hundreds of airline flights, knocking out power to thousands of customers and shutting down sections of every interstate highway in the metro Atlanta area.

Three weather-related traffic deaths were reported, two in Georgia and one in South Carolina, police said.

At Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, only one of the four runways was open for much of the day and "very few flights are coming or going," said airport spokeswoman Felicia Browder.

"I don't have an official number of cancellations, but I can say with confidence a significant number have been canceled," Browder said.

AirTran alone canceled 90 flights for the day, said spokesman Tad Hutcheson.

Delta could not provide a number of canceled flights until the end of the day, but had cut its schedule systemwide by about 40 percent in anticipation of the storm, said spokesman Anthony Black.  

In South Carolina, Delta, Northwest Airlines, U.S. Airways, and others canceled flights from Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport and from Columbia Metropolitan Airport.

Browder said most travelers in Atlanta were aware of the approaching storm, so few people are stranded at Hartsfield-Jackson.

Not everyone was so lucky. The Atlanta Hawks basketball team spent the night at the airport aboard their chartered airplane waiting to be deiced and then for permission to take off, and finally gave up Saturday morning and went to a hotel to await word on their scheduled Saturday night game in Memphis against the Grizzlies.

The ice also accumulated on power lines and tree limbs, and at least 109,000 Georgia Power customers were without power Saturday afternoon, about half of them in the Atlanta area, said spokesman Tal Wright.

Georgia Electric Membership Corp. reported 39,000 homes and businesses without power around the state.

The number of Georgia customers without power was expected to grow significantly during the night as ice continued to accumulate, and utilities in the Carolinas made preparations for expected outages, said utility officials.

Throughout the Atlanta metropolitan area, wrecks led police to shut down sections of Interstates 85, 20, 75 and 285 and some other highways during the morning, said state Department of Transportation spokeswoman Karlene Barron. Most were reopened by midday, officials said.

CANAKKALE (AA) - Two people were injured in a tornado in Ayvacik town of northwestern city of Canakkale, on Thursday.

Sources said that the tornado which hit Ahmetce village of Ayvacik town injured two people and damaged 6 houses and a mosque.

Head official of Ahmetce village Hasan Huseyin Kus said that injured people were taken to Ayvacik State Hospital. He added that minaret of the village's mosque collapsed and 6 houses were damaged during the tornado.

GENEVA (AP) - Many Arctic animals, including polar bears and some seal species, could be extinct within 20 years because of the effects of global warming, a major conservation group said Sunday.

Traditional ways of life for many indigenous people in the Arctic will also become unsustainable, unless the world "takes drastic action to reduce climate change," said the World Wide Fund for Nature.

"If we don't act immediately the Arctic will soon become unrecognizable" said Tonje Folkestad, a climate-change expert.

"Polar bears will be consigned to history, something that our grandchildren can only read about in books."

By 2026, the Earth could be an average two degrees Celsius warmer than it was in 1750, said research commissioned for WWF to be presented to a Feb. 1-3 conference on climate change in Exeter, England.

"In the Arctic, this could lead to a loss of summer sea ice, species and some types of tundra vegetation, as well as to a fundamental change in the ways of life of Inuit and other arctic residents," WWF said in a statement.

The total area covered by summer sea ice in the Arctic is already decreasing by 9.2 per cent a decade and "will disappear entirely by the end of the century," unless the situation changes, WWF said.

This would threaten the existence of polar bears and seals that live on the ice, which in turn would remove a major source of food for the indigenous communities who hunt them.

Forested areas will spread northward as those areas become warmer, threatening habitats for birds like ravens, snow buntings, falcons, loons, sandpipers and terns.

"Migratory birds will lose a vital breeding ground in the Arctic, affecting biodiversity around the globe," WWF said.

Indigenous peoples such as the Inuit in North America and Saami in Scandinavia could lose their traditional livelihoods and their communities will be threatened by the thinning sea ice, melting glaciers and thawing permafrost. [...]

MURMANSK, - A hurricane reached the Murmansk region on Sunday afternoon, with the wind exceeding 27 meters per second in the city of Murmansk and 33 meters per second on the northern coast of the Kola peninsula.

Weathermen say that the wind may reach 40 meters per second in the coastal areas of the Barents Sea and icing of vessels is possible.

The traffic on the road to Norway and the Monchegorsk sector of the Murmansk-Petersburg highway has been stopped on weather reasons.

(Hawaii) - The National Weather service in Honolulu has issued a Flash Flood Warning for... The island of Oahu in Honolulu County until 430 pm hst

At 124 pm hst...National Weather Wervice doppler radar indicated flash flooding from a storm over the warned area.

Radar indicates another line of heavy showers moving over the south and west sides of Oahu. The ground is saturated.

Additional rainfall will make conditions ripe for flash flooding. Excessive runoff from this storm will cause flash flooding of streams...highways...underpasses and low lying areas.

Motorists should be alert for flooding and should not attempt to cross fast flowing or rising water...many flash flood deaths occur when motorists try crossing flooded roadways.

Turn around...don/t drown. Escape rising water by climbing directly to higher ground. Never try to outrace a flood...either on foot or in your vehicle. Do not camp near streams or other areas subject to flooding.

(Arizona)--Another tornado warning was issued for Maricopa County on Saturday afternoon.  A funnel cloud was reportedly seen, and a few valley residents received serious property damage.  Whether a tornado touched down has yet to be established.

The warning was accompanied by rapid winds and hail storms in various areas across the valley.

The ASU baseball game was halted momentarily due to hail and heavy rain, and further north in Jerome people saw snow.  Near Flagstaff several accidents were reported due to adverse road conditions.

In the worst weekend on the NSW coast this summer, five people died after getting into trouble in the ocean and hundreds had to be rescued because of treacherous surf conditions.

Most of Sydney's northern beaches, as well as Coogee, Maroubra, North Cronulla and Tamarama beaches, were closed yesterday, although an Ironman competition went ahead at Coogee.

More than 450 swimmers were rescued by surf lifesavers and nearly 4000 were warned by lifesavers this weekend as emergency services urged people to take care in the surf.

Rough surf conditions, caused by a low that has come down from Queensland, are expected to continue this morning but ease off later today and tomorrow as the system moves towards New Zealand.

Yesterday morning, a 24-year-old man collapsed after coming out of the surf near Shellharbour. Bystanders performed CPR on the man but he died soon after in Wollongong Hospital.

A 49-year-old Gateshead man died after his dinghy capsized in Swansea Channel near Newcastle. His body was recovered by the Westpac rescue helicopter.

Near Newcastle, a sailor standing on the bow of a coal ship bound for Mexico was flung to the deck when a six-metre swell washed over the vessel early in the morning. The sailor died after sustaining extensive head injuries.

On Saturday, a 79-year-old Cronulla man died at North Cronulla beach when ambulance officers were unable to resuscitate him.

A man in his 30s who tried to rescue two children died on the Central Coast. The children managed to swim to safety, but the man was swept out to sea.

Another man was in intensive care in St Vincent's Hospital after suffering a cardiac arrest. He was pulled unconscious from the surf at Bondi beach on Saturday evening.

A 25 year-old woman was resuscitated after being found semi-conscious at North Cronulla at about 7pm on Saturday. She was taken to Sutherland Hospital and discharged yesterday.

Poor weather reduced the number of beachgoers yesterday, and fewer people had to be warned and rescued than on the previous day, a spokesman for Surf Lifesaving NSW said.

On Saturday, in two incidents at Maroubra Beach alone, more than 50 swimmers were rescued by lifesavers after they were swept off a sandbank into deep water. At North Cronulla 30 swimmers were rescued after being caught in rips.

An ambulance spokesman, Superintendent Anthony McClenaghan, urged people to swim only in patrolled areas and not to go into the water if the conditions were rough. "Don't swim alone, and don't swim after dark," he said.

Michael Logan, a severe weather forecaster at the Bureau of Meteorology, said while winds had been quite calm, swells of two to three metres had been causing a strong groundswell.

"That has more energy associated with it in terms of the power of the waves," he said.

The waves were large for the NSW coastline.

"Because of that and the amount of power that's come with them, the rips are quite a lot stronger than they normally would be," Mr Logan said.

ATLANTA - More than 300,000 customers had no electricity today in Georgia as crews worked to repair power lines snapped by an ice storm, and hundreds of people stranded by canceled airline flights spent the night sleeping at the city's airport.

Two traffic deaths in Georgia and one in South Carolina were blamed on the storm that spread sleet and freezing rain across parts of the Southeast on Saturday.

The weather was taking a sharp turn today with highs in the 40s forecast for northern Georgia and in the 60s in the southern part of the state, the National Weather Service said.

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport got ready to open a third runway today, spokeswoman Lanii Thomas said. Only two -- and at one point only one -- of its four runways were available Saturday as crews labored to scrape off ice.

Still, fewer than 100 departures were scheduled out of one of the world's busiest airports Sunday morning, she said. About 300 travelers spent the night at the airport Saturday night. [...]